Monday, December 08, 2008

Console Post of the Week

Holy crap.

This is quite the bombshell:
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has revealed that the company sold around 800,000 Wii consoles in the US over the Thanksgiving weekend - more than double the 350,000 number from last year.

800,000 Wiis in a week.

Here's some context for that number. Going back to 2001, here are the consoles that sold more than 800,000 units in the U.S. in November:
PS2--920,000 (2001)
PS2--1,300,000 (2002)
PS2--850,000 (2003)
Wii--981,000 (2007)

In other words, the Wii just sold more units in one week than the 360 or PS3 has ever sold in a full November. And it looks almost guaranteed that Nintendo is going to shatter the 1.3M units sold by the PS2 in November 2002.

The biggest month in history? I believe it's the 2.7M PS2s sold in December 2002. Depending on supply constraints, that number looks to be in jeopardy this year.

Microsoft touted its November sales in Europe in an announcement today, and there was also this tidbit:
November 2008 saw the largest Xbox sales ever in the six-year history of the brand in Europe. GfK-ChartTrack data shows that the console outsold PlayStation 3 across the entire region and in particular has seen significant gains in markets like France, Spain and Italy, where it has been outselling PlayStation 3 week after week.

That's a huge change from three months ago, and I think it again points to the problems Sony is having at their current price point. If Micrsoft can just draw with Sony in Europe, they'll outsell them worldwide, because Sony is going to get hammered in the U.S. this holiday season (see previous CPotW on advertising over Black Friday weekend). It will be no surprise if the November NPDs show the 360 selling 800k-900k units and nearly doubling PS3 sales.

It's not complicated: Sony is in a ditch (again) until they cut prices.

Site Meter