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[The leading analysis column for NPD's North American game industry stats returns with a look at February 2009's trends, from Xbox 360 sales to software surprises.]
Through February 2009, Nintendo's DS and Wii continued to dominate hardware sales while software for those systems continued to rule the top software lists, according to the latest NPD Group data released on Thursday.
Microsoft's Xbox 360 built momentum from its strong showing in January, and also made a strong showing in the top 20 software. Meanwhile Sony's platforms uniformly lost ground, although the exclusive Killzone 2 made a strong showing on the PlayStation 3 with only two days of sales.
Current Generation Console Hardware Bases
Nintendo's Wii had strong sales again in February 2009, with 753,00 systems sold, or a rate of over 188,000 systems per week. Microsoft's Xbox 360 was Nintendo's strongest competitor with sales of 391,000 systems for the month or 97,750 per week.
When this generation of hardware was fully underway – at the end of November 2006 – the Xbox 360 enjoyed a full year lead while Nintendo and Sony were just getting their hardware out to the market. Before the Wii and PlayStation 3 launched, the Xbox 360 had 100% of the current generation console hardware base.
The graph below shows how each system's share of the hardware base has changed over time. (The data is given quarterly, to smooth out month-to-month and seasonal variations.)
Points of interest are marked with letters on the graph.
A: Sony moves first on price, first with reduction of the 60GB system to $500, and then the introduction of the $400 model with a 40GB hard drive and no PlayStation 2 backward compatibility. Sony's marketshare begins to increase.
B: The Wii officially overtakes the Xbox 360 in hardware share.
C: Microsoft's price cut strategy begins to pay off, slowing the loss of marketshare to its competitors. PlayStation 3 share drops for the first time, from 19% to 18%.
As we near the end of the first quarter of 2009, the Wii stands within a few percentage points of the 50% mark. However, more robust sales of the Xbox 360 and modest (but flagging) sales of the PlayStation 3 have slowed the growth of the Nintendo consoles share, at least by this measure.
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@ Sebastian / @Matt
I believe NPD covers all North America, not just sales from the USA.
1) Bluray
2) If you factor in the 'real cost' of owning a 360 which incluces a Harddrive ( which is proprietary and VERY expensive unlike PS3 units, '&' a wireless adapter ( $99 + tax ) '&' non free xbox live, '&' a 'BluRay' player since HDDVD IS DEAD, then you are at that point 'well' beyoind the cost of the ps3, even if you factor in backwards compatability.
Games of course are going to be instrumental in selling systems as is seen, and Killzone 2 is only the 'beginning' of developers harnessing the PS3, just as PS2 before it , -if we remember our history ;)
If we remember our history...
a) Never a console manufacturer got a third cycle in the top in 30 years of gaming
b) Never the most powerful console of a generation ended at the top in 20 years of gaming
;-)
1) Ps3 has the best Bluray player in it from what I've Reviews Ive read:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/147209-3/the_best_bluray_players.html > ps3 Bluray player is noted as one of the absolute best period for various reasons.
2) You said absolutely nothing about total 'cost of ownership' ( gee, I wonder why ), and that alone I think spells doom for 360, at least in part due to the rise of BluRay, let alone the rise in cost of ownership of XBox Live ( $50/year does add up especially if your on a budget as most 'are' at this time in our economic problems).
Oh and btw, History doesn't always repeat itself, and we're looking at a very narrow window as relates to consoles.
:-)
If the Loot Ninja source is to be believed then yes Sony is prepping a price cut for next month. Seems pretty evident now with all these retailers trying to flush their stock out of channel with all these promotional gift card offerings that have been going on for well over a month now. However, according to their source it’s not only Sony prepping a nice price cut its Microsoft as well for April. So basically MS could once again pull the rug right from under them and that would certainly be something else to see. Thing is a lot folks have this preconceived notion that MS is done with price cuts for a good while, maybe or maybe not. They can drop the price of the Elite and flush that out of the channel and then they could drop the price the premium to $250. If they were really smart they could take the Arcade and throw in the old 20GB drives and price it for $179 before the holidays and if you think the $199 price point was a hot ticket Christmas item last year that SKU would make it look like a joke in comparison.
Since the $199 price drop the 360 lead over the PS3 has increased by right at ~1.7 million per NPD figures. At a 7.3 million lead there is little hope that dynamic is going change in the three or fours year left before the next gen arrives. If I had to make a guess now like at this point last year my best guess going into 2010 would be the lead will be even larger.
The key question is: who is going to teach the casual market about the cost of ownership? Microsoft is not going to, and Sony doesn't do anything either. Even if you are right and the total cost of an Xbox 360 is higher than a PS3, the consumer doesn't know that, or prefer to go with a Xbox 360 just because it is cheaper.
This console generation was decided during E3 2006 when Nintendo let everyone test the controller. The media chose them, and you know, the mass market (the one that decides where industries move) follows the media. It is possible that PlayStation 3 finishes ahead of Xbox 360 when all is said and done, but I doubt Sony will ever reach the 150 million unit barrier they wanted to.
About the history, your window was extremely short, just 6 or so years since PS2 launched until now. When I stretched it to 20 years, other facts you may not have realized appeared, others that you now dismiss because history "doesn't always repeat".
I'd also like to add that the industry needs to stop assuming that everyone owns an HDTV (most of the market does not, a fact that Nintendo is quite happy to take advantage of with their simpler, cheaper hardware). The same is true for blu-ray discs; most of the market is not about to restock their library, and cannot even if they wanted to do so.
BluRay is no advantage for a console, cause BluRay is something which doesn't appeal to a mainstream userbase, it will find it's niche, Laserdisc found one as well.
Dave, I think that what really moves hardware is marketing. It's about the perception of what the hardware offers. It's not the technical specifications of the hardware, and it's not the software lineup, it's the perception. Look at Metacritic's overall scores. Look at which platform has the most high-rated games. It's not really about that, though. It's not about what's really out there, or what's really being sold, and that's why "true cost of ownership" doesn't matter. It's about perceived software library. It's about perceived total cost of ownership.
Sega marketed "blast processing," a completely made-up term, and did well with it. They also totally dropped the ball on the Dreamcast, and people just waited a year to get the PS2, which was perceived as being superior. Whether or not the PS2 was superior isn't important. What matters is that people held off on buying a pretty nice machine on the perception that a different, unreleased machine was going to be better.
-WE are also in another format switch with many people relying on Downloads to Hard-Drive and Netflix's, rather dealing with another VHS-DVD headache.
-If you look at Console trends, 9/10 the numbers start to decline at this stage in the game. A rising Sun for Sony seems implausible.
-The World economy is at its lowest point in 80 years.. The Japanese are known for Stonewalling even at the face of defeat. If Sony does not reduce the PlayStation to $225-$175 then they are going to end up in the same place the other Japanese console makers have been for the last 30 years.. a Wiki entry.