Nintendo’s Wii Beats Sony’s PlayStation 3 (PS3) in December Face-off

At the end of the year, Nintendo Co. Ltd.’s Wii managed to stare down Sony Corp.’s PS3, in the battle of the game consoles, recording the higher sales volume of the two in December. According to numbers released by retail market research firm NPD, the new Wii sold 604,200 consoles in December in the US, compared to the 490,700 that PS3 managed to sell during the same period.

The three big names in the console arena, Microsoft Corp., Sony Corp., and Nintendo Co. Ltd. are currently in a three-way race to the top of the console heap. These have been interesting times for the $30 billion video game industry. Going into the New Year, the big guns have been revving up their engines. Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox has managed to retain top spot so far, selling 1.1 million consoles in the bargain in December.

There is, however, a catch to this number, Xbox debuted an entire year ahead of Wii and PS3, in November 2005, to be precise. Besides, the PS3 and Wii consoles were in short supply during the year-end holiday season. This was a crucial matter, as the year-end holiday season is when the US video game industry racks up almost half its annual sales. The shortage of Wiis and PS3s meant a clear field for Xbox to forge ahead.

The video games industry has been having a pretty good time. Figures have shown overall videogame and hardware sales to be at $3.7 billion in December, a jump of 28 percent over the same period in 2005. The numbers overall for the year 2006 were pretty impressive too, at$12.5 billion, or a 19 percent jump.

Games sales, excluding titles for PCs, shot up to $1.7 billion, a 5.4 percent jump. Hardware sales skyrocketed by 59 percent to $1.6 billion. This jump was manly due to sales of high-end consoles such as the PS3 and the Xbox 360. The retail price for PS3 is $600, while the Xbox sells for a retail price of $400.

According to Nintendo spokeswoman Perrin Kaplan, the NPD numbers were not entirely in agreement with the numbers at Nintendo. She said, “Our numbers in terms of what we have shipped is definitely well above that (NPD) number. What NPD does not account for is the product that is in transit.”

Dave Karraker, spokesman for Sony, said that December was a record-breaking month for the electronics giant, as NPD’s numbers showed it making a killing with total US sales of $1.6 billion.

A Microsoft release on Sunday said it had shipped over 10 million (10.4 million) units of Xbox 360 during the year 2006. The company’s highest selling game for the Xbox 360 was Gears of War, with 815, 700 units sold in December. It expects that number to swell to 3 million by next week, according to David Hufford, director of project management for Xbox.

Sony Corp.’s market-leading PS2 game, Guitar Hero II by Activision Inc. was the second-best seller for December, with a sale of 805,200. The third-highest seller for the same month was Madden NFL 07 by Electronic Arts Inc., also designed for the PS2, wit sales figures of 737,000 units.

PS2 is the current leader of console games globally; Sony sold 1.4 million units of these. Other holiday favorites included hand-held console players, with Nintendo selling 1.6 million Nintendo DS units and Sony pushing out 953,000 PlayStation Portables, according to NPD.