Clearing Up Holiday Sales Rumours

Gamespot's regular 'Rumor Control' column tackles some confusion around who had the most holiday sales among the three new consoles. A CNBC broadcast prompted GamesIndustry.biz to proclaim the 360 the winner, with some 2 Million in sales. The Wii followed closely behind with 1.8 Million, and the PS3 followed that number with 750,000. The catch here is that, while it's possible a viewer could have assumed this was official NPD data, it wasn't. From the article: "The segment is an interview with Billy Pidgeon, an analyst with IT market intelligence firm IDC. In it, a graphic appears on screen showing estimated console sales in North America for November through December 25, 2006. The numbers match up with the figures being attributed to the NPD, but CNBC attributes IDC as its source on them. The confusion likely comes from a blurb of text that appears at the bottom of the screen shortly after the graphic is taken down. It notes that the 'NDP Group' (sic) pegged the Wii as selling more than twice the number of PS3s for the month of November, which is true, but also something that was announced last month." The numbers may prove to be true, but we're going to have to wait a bit longer to see who actually came out ahead last month.

Does NPD even provide real numbers?

[Ars-Gonzo]

Have they started including online sales yet or is it still just brick and mortar?

Re:The eternal shipped vs. sold

[_xeno_]

As a fairly useless anecdote, in almost every store I've been to, they were completely sold out of Wiis, had several PS3s on hand, and had plenty of XBox360s on display.

And I've been to a lot of stores looking for my Wii - I've had to resign myself that about the earliest the stores expect to receive more is late January to early February.

But in several cases, I've had a hopeful sales person mention after I asked them about the Wii that they have the PS3 available for sale. Too bad I don't have, A) a HDTV or B) $600 to spare. (And, yes, I mean $600 - I never did see anyone selling the $500 model, so even though it exists, no one had it.)

But essentially no one has a Wii and won't for a while. Seems that, short term at least, the Wii is the clear winner.

Re:The eternal shipped vs. sold

[the_B0fh]

Actually, I'm interested in the PS2's sales numbers. If the PS2 still continues to outsell the 360/ps3, that should say something.

Re:Numbers

[HappySqurriel]

vgcharts.org attempts to track sales in Japan, North America and Europe (and is probably the most accurate) but there aren't good numbers from Europe because of the difficulty in collecting data in dozens of countries.

As of December 24th Nintendo had sold 859,000 Wii in Japan, with 286,500 selling in the week of December 18th-December 24th so the total Japaneese sales numbers for December will be between 1,000,000-1,100,000 (as a guestimate; later today or tomorow we should have the sales for the week of December 25th to December 31st).

In North America NPD was reporting 1.8 Million units sold up until December 25th, with total December sales available on January 11th; as an estimate, 2 Million units seems reasonable if Nintendo shipped a reasonable number in the final week of December.

In Europe it was reported that Nintendo sold 375,000 in the launch week ...

If Nintendo successfully sold 500,000-700,000 additional units in Europe since the launch of the system it is very likely that they would meet/surpass their 4 Million units sold in 2006 target. Whether they are successful or not, they will come far closer to their estimates than either Sony or Microsoft did.

Three things to consider (from WSJ)

[WillAffleckUW]

According to a number of detailed articles I read in the print edition of the Wall Street Journal [wsj.com] (expensive subscription required, ain't paying), it's not just the actual console sales of Wii consoles, but the actual purchase of Wii controllers, games, and memory cards, that made the Wii the blockbuster seller this Christmas season.

Unlike the PS3, where most people bought the one really good game (Resistance Fall of Man), or the existing game purchases by xBox360 owners of Gears of War, the Wii console buyers ended up buying a lot of games and extra controllers, leading to situations where controllers were usually only found in back rooms and behind counters, as they were snapped up the second they appeared. Games were in reasonable supply, but most console owners bought quite a few games - probably affected by the MSRP of $50 for Wii games, compared to $60 for 360 and PS3 games.

However, sales of the PS2 games were fairly strong, especially that rock guitar thing (forgot the name) and a number of other strong titles.

XBox Advantage

[vga_init]

To rationalize the results, here are some advantages I can think of that the XBox 360 touted...

• First to market: It's been around for a while, so more people have seen it in action. That level of familiarity gives consumers more confidence--they know what they're buying. Also, let's say little Timmy sees gets to play with his friend's XBox and now wants one and talks about it all the time. I think his family might pick up on that; it's easy to want what other people already have. It's also easy to want what nobody else has, but you have to know about it first. More people know about things that exist than things that don't exist.
• Domestic brand: People in the US know Microsoft. They trust Microsoft with their lives. Some people worship it. Don't believe me? I've seen it. The mere fact that Microsoft's name is on the box will cause people to gravitate toward it. The average Joe American tends to ignore Microsoft opponents because while he doesn't understand the issues, he knows how to stereotype anti-Microsoft folks as fanatics--tree hugging hippies that would just as soon turn on his cherished nation as his favorite software vendor. To him these people are the same people that are always saying bad things about the president, and he can't agree with those people.
• Success of XBox: The original console did pretty well. It became a household name rather quickly and had enough good titles to get people coming back for more.

THE X-Box 360 Advantage... is Live...

[trdrstv]

You missed the # 1 advantage of the 360... X-box live.

It's better then anything else out there, and "Acheivements" are their own brand of crack... This gives them an advantage over multiplatform releases.

Re:Numbers skewed from shortages

[HappySqurriel]

I agree with you and have seen this type of behavior myself (people with no interest in games wanting a Wii) but I think this is the reason why I find it so difficult to predict when the Wii will become available.

With the PS2, PS3 and XBox 360 I have a pretty well established understanding on how the people who are buying these systems will react to certain events; surrounding the release of big games the sales will spike, as the price drops the spikes will become larger and the "average" number of systems sold will increase, at "Christmas" nearly 50% of hardware sales will occur within a 6 week period and will crash (to the yearly low point) for 6 to 8 weeks following. "New" gamers will likely react quite differently than "Traditional" gamers and will likely have their own set of "big games" which does not match a "Traditional" gamers "big games" (say Wario Ware: Smooth Moves or Wii Play may be huge for the non-gamer crowd). Even how non-gamers buy games does not match how traditional gamers buy games because game sales are not front loaded [vgcharts.org].

Re:Why does everyone want a winner?

[HeavenlyBankAcct]

There are plenty of people out there who feel this strange, distorted need to attach their personal feelings of well-being to products. It's no different than the guys who define themselves as "Chevy Guys" or "Ford Guys." Uninteresting people need to identify themselves in some way so that they can feel like they're individuals. What you're witnessing here is legions of confused kids who somehow have gotten "feeling good about themselves" mixed up with "corporate loyalty."