Console Hardware Sales, In Detail

Much of the data Nintendo presented about console hardware sales in the United States has been available in the monthly media reports made by the NPD Group. For example, there is hardly anything new in the following figure showing hardware sales in the January to September period for the past four years.

Figures like the ones above are covered in the analysis of the NPD Group's monthly reports here on Gamasutra.

The most recent article, on September 2008 sales, can be found here.

The European market is mostly opaque to outside observers because relatively little hard data is released about hardware and software sales, other than software rankings.

For that reason, the following slide from Nintendo is of particular interest.

As Mr. Iwata noted in his prepared remarks, this graph retains the same scale as the corresponding graph for the United States, and therefore reveals the relative scale between the two markets. (For a direct comparison, mouse over the above image.)

Even if we figure in the extra 20% from the market outside of the U.K., Germany, France, and Spain the European market represents sales of fewer than 7.5 million consoles so far in 2008, compared to the 11 million in the United States during the same period.

Wii vs. HD Consoles in Europe

Moreover, this figure makes clear that the Wii's dominance in the United States is equally true in Europe. In both regions, Wii sales are significantly higher than the combined sales of both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Microsoft and Sony have gone back and forth in public statements over which company's HD console is ahead in Europe. While recent price breaks on the Xbox 360 have probably changed the dynamic significantly, it is worth taking stock of the data reflected in the graph above.

For the 9 months of sales shown in each year, the Xbox 360 appears to have had sales of around 2.1 million systems since 2006 and the PlayStation 3 has garnered sales of over 2.2 million systems since 2007. However, these figures are just for the U.K., Germany, France, and Spain, so they do not cover all of Europe.

(Judging from figures elsewhere in Nintendo's presentation, the figures for each console across all of Europe is roughly 40% more than the ones given for the U.K., Germany, France, and Spain subset.)

The weekly data shown in the figure below is particularly enlightening.

Except briefly at the beginning of 2008, the Wii has been outselling the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in Europe. This is particularly unfortunate for the Xbox 360 which has seen two price cuts in Europe this year alone.

Even so, the PlayStation 3 has been outselling the Xbox 360 for most of the year, and only recently have the two consoles reversed fortunes.