Despite a healthy debut of the new DSi handheld in the U.S. during March, a 17 percent year-on-year drop in Wii sales has led Nintendo shares to slip 6.6 percent.
“Our launch schedules are more spread out so we’re going to have these tough comparisons month to month,” said Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime in a Bloomberg report. “But if you look at the overall trend of our business, it continues to be very healthy.”
The Nintendo DSi sold 435,000 units in its first week on sale in the U.S., according to figures provided by Nintendo. This compares to just 226,300 for the DS Lite in the same time period.
The DS launched in the U.S. on April 5 for $169.99.
As part of the company’s official response to the official March NPD results, Nintendo of America’s Cammie Dunaway commented: “Nintendo systems accounted for 58.4 percent of the video game hardware sold in March, more than all other systems combined.”
Nintendo also had four first party titles in the top ten, with Pokemon Platinum at number two with 805,000 unit sales, Wii Fit at number three with 541,000, Wii Play at number eight on 281,000 and Mario Kart Wii at number nine on 278,000.
Without Nintendo hardware the company claims that the industry as a whole would be down 14 percent on the previous year’s figures.
From the article :"Without Nintendo hardware the company claims that the industry as a whole would be down 14 percent on the previous year’s figures"
Spin, spin.
I'd be more interested in Wii March software sales comparisons to last year. We already know that Wii hardware was down 17% from last year. I think Wii software sales were down too. Just looking at the top 10 NPD figures from last year, Super Smash Bros. Brawl alone sold 2.7 million. This year, the sum total of all Wii games in the top NPD top 10, came in at just 1.1 million. That's a pretty big fall of 1.6 million which is not likely to be made up by Wii games outside the top 10.
Kevin, of course it is down. That is like saying Xbox 360 software was down in September 2008 after Halo 3 (1.5m combined for 2008 with 3.3m for Halo 3 alone in September 2007).
Recession is finally hitting the gaming industry consumers.
March 2008 NPD hardware figures (http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/NPD_2008_in_review):
Wii: 721,000
X360: 262,2000
PS3: 257,000
PS2: 216,000
NDS: 698,000
PSP: 297,000
March 2009 NPD hardware figures (from this article):
Wii - 601,000
Xbox 360 - 330,000
PS3 - 218,000
PS2 - 112,000
DS - 563,000
PSP - 168,000
In March 2008, Nintendo accounted for 1.42 million of 2.451 million hardware units and the industry made $556 million in hardware sales. (1.031 million not Nintendo)
In March 2009, Nintendo accounted for 1.16 million of 1.992 million hardware units for $455 million in hardware sales. (832,000 not Nintendo)
So, by hardware units, Nintendo's amount went down 17 percent, and the industry went down 18.8 percent. If one took Nintendo out of both months' results, the industry would actually have gone down 19.4 percent (again, by hardware units).
On the other hand, since I couldn't find good estimates available of actual revenue per company per total revenue, we don't have enough information to determine how much each company's share of revenue is in dollar amounts. We can't simply multiply a company's share by the total industry revenue, since that incorrectly spreads the dollars equally by hardware unit.
If you want to compare software sales, here are the March 2008 NPD numbers:
Actually, I just realized that we do have access to revenue per hardware unit numbers. We just have to multiply the unit cost per SKU versus units sold per SKU. The only problem is that there are different SKUs for the Xbox 360, PS3, and DS, so somebody has to dig up sales per SKU.
Thanks for posting the basic information Carl. I appreciate it.
Doing some basic excel work with the data, and assuming that every unit sold by Microsoft and Sony were the cheaper units ($280 for Arcade, $400 for PS3, and $170 for PSP in 08) you will find out that together Microsoft and Sony made approximately $254,786,000 in the month of March '08. In '09 they did $196,320,000 ($200 for Arcade, $400 for PS3, and $170 for PSP). Which would be around a 20% loss. Again assuming that every unit sold was the cheapest model in both times.
Nintendo on the other hand hasn't changed their prices for each year, so my math comes out about the same: They have around an 18% loss from the previous year with their numbers alone. ($270,975,810.00 ('08) and $223,428,360.00 ('09)).
If I'm forgetting something please someone let me know. I'm just interested in looking at the numbers.
Matt, thanks for your numbers. If your estimate is accurate, the non-Nintendo hardware revenue would be $301 million in 2008 and $249 million in 2009. That would be about a 17% loss. The actual revenue loss must be slightly higher, since your estimate did not include the more expensive SKUs.
So, it's mysterious how Nintendo came up with 14 percent. Maybe they were using more conservative (or more accurate, hehe) numbers. The non-Nintendo hardware revenue drop actually appears to be worse (at least 17 percent). Maybe they factored in the software revenue numbers, while we did not?
Spin, spin.
I'd be more interested in Wii March software sales comparisons to last year. We already know that Wii hardware was down 17% from last year. I think Wii software sales were down too. Just looking at the top 10 NPD figures from last year, Super Smash Bros. Brawl alone sold 2.7 million. This year, the sum total of all Wii games in the top NPD top 10, came in at just 1.1 million. That's a pretty big fall of 1.6 million which is not likely to be made up by Wii games outside the top 10.
I had a chance to try the Wii motion plus and well...... I already pre-ordered 2.
Are they removing their own figures from the previous year when they came to that?
Recession is finally hitting the gaming industry consumers.
March 2008 NPD hardware figures (http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/NPD_2008_in_review):
Wii: 721,000
X360: 262,2000
PS3: 257,000
PS2: 216,000
NDS: 698,000
PSP: 297,000
March 2009 NPD hardware figures (from this article):
Wii - 601,000
Xbox 360 - 330,000
PS3 - 218,000
PS2 - 112,000
DS - 563,000
PSP - 168,000
In March 2008, Nintendo accounted for 1.42 million of 2.451 million hardware units and the industry made $556 million in hardware sales. (1.031 million not Nintendo)
In March 2009, Nintendo accounted for 1.16 million of 1.992 million hardware units for $455 million in hardware sales. (832,000 not Nintendo)
So, by hardware units, Nintendo's amount went down 17 percent, and the industry went down 18.8 percent. If one took Nintendo out of both months' results, the industry would actually have gone down 19.4 percent (again, by hardware units).
On the other hand, since I couldn't find good estimates available of actual revenue per company per total revenue, we don't have enough information to determine how much each company's share of revenue is in dollar amounts. We can't simply multiply a company's share by the total industry revenue, since that incorrectly spreads the dollars equally by hardware unit.
If you want to compare software sales, here are the March 2008 NPD numbers:
http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/NPD_March_2008
Doing some basic excel work with the data, and assuming that every unit sold by Microsoft and Sony were the cheaper units ($280 for Arcade, $400 for PS3, and $170 for PSP in 08) you will find out that together Microsoft and Sony made approximately $254,786,000 in the month of March '08. In '09 they did $196,320,000 ($200 for Arcade, $400 for PS3, and $170 for PSP). Which would be around a 20% loss. Again assuming that every unit sold was the cheapest model in both times.
Nintendo on the other hand hasn't changed their prices for each year, so my math comes out about the same: They have around an 18% loss from the previous year with their numbers alone. ($270,975,810.00 ('08) and $223,428,360.00 ('09)).
If I'm forgetting something please someone let me know. I'm just interested in looking at the numbers.
So, it's mysterious how Nintendo came up with 14 percent. Maybe they were using more conservative (or more accurate, hehe) numbers. The non-Nintendo hardware revenue drop actually appears to be worse (at least 17 percent). Maybe they factored in the software revenue numbers, while we did not?