Wii, DS Dominate February Hardware Sales

Gamasutra has the NPD numbers for last month, which shows a continuation of Nintendo's sales dominance. Overall the new consoles have again meant that industry sales were up, some 28% over last year's same-month figures. Hardware sales were up some 98%, with much of that performance attributable to the DS and Wii. Here's the breakdown: "Turning to hardware, the DS headed overall hardware sell-through with an impressive 485,000 units, followed by Nintendo's Wii, which sold 335,000 units despite continued issues with shortages. The Xbox 360 sold through a reasonable, if not spectacular 228,000 copies, and the PlayStation 3 slumped to a disappointing 127,000 units, despite no apparent shortages. Elsewhere, the PlayStation 2 moved a still impressive 295,000 at its relatively cheap current price, and the PlayStation Portable sold 176,000, markedly behind the DS. Finally, the various varieties of the Game Boy Advance sold a not unreasonable 136,000 units."

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Re:That was a heroic effort

[pipatron]

Well, the Game Boy Advance is 6 years old.

I bought a GBA in February

[taxman_10m]

The price is right, the new screen is excellent, good selection of games, and the form factor is perfect.

Re:That was a heroic effort

[KDR_11k]

Well, the GBA is obsolete for years now (since the DS plays GBA games and more). The PS3 is a new console. While it's reasonable that the PS2 would outsell the PS3 at this point (mostly due to price) the GBA should have died a year ago because the DS is juat a better choice (unless you want to play GBC and GB games but is that really something that people will buy a GBA for NOW?).

Re:Nintendo must be kicking themselves

[KDR_11k]

They can still do that later when needed, right now Wii Sports seems to work well enough for selling these.

Japan's Hardware sales

[MeanderingMind]

I've totaled up the Japan numbers for as close to the same time period as I could (Feb 5th through March 4th). Here are the results:

NDS: 581,483
PSP: 233,046
GBA: 7,305
 
Wii: 278,646
PS3: 107,422
360: 17,583
PS2: 62,553

Sources:
http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=7480 [gamesarefun.com]
http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=7499 [gamesarefun.com]
http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=7518 [gamesarefun.com]
http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=7553 [gamesarefun.com]

Nintendo is winning

[paladinwannabe2]

Even if they never get at much marketshare as Sony/Microsoft, they are certainly making the most profits. Who cares if your revenue is (relatively) low when your profits are so much higher?

Re:That was a heroic effort

[Chris Burke]

127,000 units sold of your brand new console is dissapointing.

136,000 units sold of your extremely old, obsolete console is not unreasonable.

295,000 units sold of your old, obsolete console is impressive.

Where is the bravery? Recognizing context? Understanding that different numbers mean different things for different situations?

Here's another example of how similar numbers could be either impressive or dissapointing, depending on context.

"Florence Joyner ran a dissapointing 11.4s 100m dash in a 1997 time trial..."

"Stephen Hawking ran a truly incredible 12s 100m dash yesterday..."

Re:Nintendo must be kicking themselves

[saboola]

They would be kicking themselves if they DID do that. They are not having a hard time selling this console. Giving away 10 free games makes no sense from a business standpoint.

Blame developers and hardcore gamers

[MMaestro]

If theres anyone to blame for the glut of mini-games being passed off as full games, blame third-party developers and anti-Nintendo zealots. Don't forget, during/after the Gamecube's lifetime you had developers whining about rising costs and greater risks, then choosing to jump onto the PS3 bandwagon because the 360 looked weak and the Wii looked risky. Then you had gamers trashing on the Wii all over the internet mocking everything from the graphics, to the name, to the motion sensor, to the hardware weaknesses, to the radical features announced, etc.

When it finally looked like the Wii was going to smash through the video game market, developers were caught with their pants down being raped by PS3 development costs, blind-sided by Xbox Live Arcade's runaway success and the Wii's "we're Nintendo, we will ALWAYS have a profit" guarantee. What you see is simply the net result of such behavior.

Re:That was a heroic effort

[Anonymous Coward]

and it's not the primary, not the secondary, it's the fucking tertiary system from nintendo. that is if you count the ds and ds lite as one. pinhead.

Re:here to stay

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that is not going to happen. Game studios and publishers make money on game sales not console sales. Console companies get most of their money on game sales too. Slashdot continues to be fascinated by hardware sales numbers, but these are misleading. If you look at game sales, then for February the PS2 was the leader, followed by 360 in second and Wii in third. The 360 is still the clear winner for next-gen consoles in game sales and console sales.

If you look at the bigger picture the Wii is just not much more appealing than the 360 or PS3. What are the games for the Wii that are expected to sell >1 million copies? Zelda, Wario Ware, Super Smash Brothers, Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime, Super Paper Mario, and Mario Party 8. What do all of those games have in common? They are all published by Nintendo, and most are developed by Nintendo too. Half of the top 10 selling games on Wii or from Nintedo right now(this will go up when more of the games I mentioned come out); 8 on gamecube were from Nintendo. Compare with Sony having 0 in the top 10 for PS2, 2 on PS3, and MS having 1 in the top 10 on the 360, and 3 in the top 10 an xbox. Game studios and publishers are well aware this trend.

Whether or not Wii titles that are not from Nintendo will sell well compared to other consoles is still an open question. Current numbers don't look promising. Call of duty 3 has sold 1 million on 360, 600 thousand on PS2, 250 thousand on Wii, and 200 thousand on PS3. Madden 07 has sold 3.2 million on PS2, 1.2 million on 360, 350 thousand on PS3, and 300 thousand on Wii. There are twice as many Wiis as PS3s but that doesn't mean your game is going to sell twice as well on the Wii than it would on PS3. So I wouldn't worry too much about game publishers and studios ignoring all other consoles and focusing solely on Wii. They would be foolish if they did.

Re:here to stay

[Jason Earl]

No, that is not going to happen. Game studios and publishers make money on game sales not console sales. Console companies get most of their money on game sales too. Slashdot continues to be fascinated by hardware sales numbers, but these are misleading. If you look at game sales, then for February the PS2 was the leader, followed by 360 in second and Wii in third. The 360 is still the clear winner for next-gen consoles in game sales and console sales.

If you look at the bigger picture the Wii is just not much more appealing than the 360 or PS3. What are the games for the Wii that are expected to sell >1 million copies? Zelda, Wario Ware, Super Smash Brothers, Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime, Super Paper Mario, and Mario Party 8. What do all of those games have in common? They are all published by Nintendo, and most are developed by Nintendo too. Half of the top 10 selling games on Wii or from Nintedo right now(this will go up when more of the games I mentioned come out); 8 on gamecube were from Nintendo. Compare with Sony having 0 in the top 10 for PS2, 2 on PS3, and MS having 1 in the top 10 on the 360, and 3 in the top 10 an xbox. Game studios and publishers are well aware this trend.

Whether or not Wii titles that are not from Nintendo will sell well compared to other consoles is still an open question. Current numbers don't look promising. Call of duty 3 has sold 1 million on 360, 600 thousand on PS2, 250 thousand on Wii, and 200 thousand on PS3. Madden 07 has sold 3.2 million on PS2, 1.2 million on 360, 350 thousand on PS3, and 300 thousand on Wii. There are twice as many Wiis as PS3s but that doesn't mean your game is going to sell twice as well on the Wii than it would on PS3. So I wouldn't worry too much about game publishers and studios ignoring all other consoles and focusing solely on Wii. They would be foolish if they did.

That post was the best Anonymous Coward post I have ever seen on Slashdot. I quoted the whole thing so that people would have a better chance of seeing it.

That being the case, I think that it is still pretty early to tell whether or not the Wii will sell third party software. People that currently have Wiis are purchasing them to play Nintendo's games, no one would argue with that. Heck, where I live the only way to even purchase a Wii is to buy it bundled with several games. It is possible that Wii owners will buy game titles like Madden 07 and Call of Duty 3 when they work through the games that came with the system.

On the other hand, if the Wii continues to dramatically outsell the other consoles then eventually the third party developers will come to the conclusion that Nintendo really has found a way to tap into a much bigger market than the "traditional gamer." If Nintendo ends up with the biggest share of the game console market then third party developers will have little choice but to learn how to sell to that market. If that means that they have to adapt to a new strategy that doesn't involve slapping a new number on the end of the same tired game, then that's what they'll have to do.