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March NPD Sales Show Continuing Trends 33

GameDaily has coverage of the NPD numbers for March, which show a general continuation of trends we've seen since the Wii and PS3 were released last year. Overall, sales are up 54% across the industry, with the DS leading the pack by a healthy amount. "The [DS] sold through 508K units for the month. The PS2, likely fueled by God of War II, came in second with 280K units. The Wii followed with 259K — quite respectable but far lower than certain analyst forecasts, which had pegged it at around 400K. The Wii now stands at 2.1 million in the US. Microsoft's Xbox 360 sold another 199K, bringing its life-to-date total to 5.3 million in the U.S."
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March NPD Sales Show Continuing Trends

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  • The Wii followed with 259K--quite respectable but far lower than certain analyst forecasts, which had pegged it at around 400K.
    I guess this is the nice way to say "Sales dropped 41% since January, despite Nintendo's claims of ramping up production to meet demand."
    • That's funny, all I've been hearing is that that they held back supply after they met their target for that quarter. I expect sales in April to be much higher, April being the beginning of a new quarter.
      • It's pulling shit like that erodes 3rd party support.
      • Re:O rly? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by eln ( 21727 ) on Friday April 20, 2007 @02:51PM (#18815081)
        That's the rumor that's been all over the place, but here it is almost the end of April and I still can't find a Wii anywhere. If they were holding units back so they could dump them on the market in April, the second part of their plan isn't working so well.

        I think the "stockpiling units until April" rumor is more wishful thinking than anything else.
        • Not to defend that utterly retarded theory (for one thing, if they were going to artificially limit supply, they would have limited it to a level where they could still outsell the PS2)... But remember that the sale goes on Nintendo's books when they sell it to the retailer (or supply chain middleman, however it works), not when the retailer puts the box on the shelf for you to buy. So they could have theoretically opened the floodgates on their warehouses on April 1, sold a ton of units to retailers, and
        • I haven't been shopping for a wii (don't have the money at the moment) but easter weekend did seem to have a lot of adds for the wii. Most stores stopped having ads for the wii a while ago but easter weekend was the first I'd seen an ad for an actual wii system in a long time.
        • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          That's the rumor that's been all over the place, but here it is almost the end of April and I still can't find a Wii anywhere. If they were holding units back so they could dump them on the market in April, the second part of their plan isn't working so well.

          I think the "stockpiling units until April" rumor is more wishful thinking than anything else.

          Well, a store where I visit sold 90 units in last week - the store was stockpiling them. All sold out a couple of hours later. So it looks like there is still

    • I think Nintendo is simply burning through supply that was built up during last year's pre-launch production. We will probably see production increase after this month, as Nintendo's financial year will be beginning.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • sept these are NPR numbers, which have NEVER reflected online sales or Walmarts.

        Jesus, can we put this myth to bed at some point?

        I'll say it simply: NPD reports do reflect both online sales and Wal-Mart.

        What they don't do is actually count those sales. That doesn't mean they can't reflect them.

        The NPD, like most other organizations doing polling, relies on statistical sampling. Their sample, though, is huge - about 60% of the total market. That means they can be accurate to within about 0.1% - probably a
    • by 222 ( 551054 )
      The surplus that was created to fuel holiday shopping has been exhausted. Considering the Wii is pretty much sold out everywhere, expect similar numbers until Nintendo opens additional production facilities.
  • So, anyone wanna guess one of the things that are selling all those DSes? I'll give you a hint: it starts with 'P' and ends with 'okemon'... (Two more days, isn't it?)
  • Around 9.5 million Xbox 360s have been sold, and around 6.2 million Wiis.

    According to TFA, Nintendo is only selling 60 thousand monthly compared to Microsoft. At this rate, it will take 55 months to close the gap.

    • You're using the difference in north american sales to show when nintendo will close the world wide gap. Remember that the wii sells well in Japan, where the 360 doesn't really sell at all. Nintendo is actually catching up considerably faster than this.
      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by toolie ( 22684 )
        Not only that, but NPD uses a subset of North American numbers. They don't include online sales, or from some major chains (Wal-Mart I think is one of them). Add those in and the Wii is catching up a lot faster than the NPD numbers alone makes it look like.
        • They don't have data from online sales or Walmart, but the numbers reflect 100% of the market (through extrapolation).
    • about 10 mil in 15 months (360) compared to 6 1/2 mil in about 6 months.... and you are saying 55 months??? Is this "new math"?
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        Assuming neither console has any drop in sales in about 23 months the Wii will have sold as many consoles as the 360. Wii monthly sales are about 1.083 mil. 360 are about .66. so setting 1.083M = .66M + 10 gives us an M of approximately 23. I had to find some online graphing calculator to find the intersects. High school was so long ago.
      • It's Math 2.0 ;-)
    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Also dont forget that while the 360 and PS3 will have consistant sales the Wii wont, many are predicting it to drop in a big way once the "fad" dynamic dies down, and when that happens Sony and MS will sail passed.
  • Last set of numbers I saw - Nintendo was producing 1 million Wii's / month and ramping up to 1.5 million / month.
  • Shouldn't the NPD numbers be shouting: Video games industry is dying! Video games industry is dying!

    Or was that last week's Slashdot news?
  • Google & Wikipedia don't seem to know, which of course leaves me helpless. All the gamer sites assume everyone knows... can you tell I'm not a video game junkie?

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