There is no doubt that recession has weighed heavy on consumer demand, but the Thanksgiving week coupled with discounts and marketing promotions finally attracted gamers to the stores.
Early sales strong
In a notable beginning to the holiday season, Nintendo’s Wii remained in high demand this Thanksgiving week. Nintendo sold 550,000 Wii’s during the Nov. 22-28 period in the nation.
According to the manufacturer’s internal estimates, even DS Lite and Dsi posted strong numbers. The two consoles combined sold more than 1 million units.
The two handhelds’ combined one week sales eclipsed the record set by the Game Boy Advance during Thanksgiving week in 2002.
Nintendo’s combined sale of 1.5 million hardware units signifies that it sold 150 consoles every minute during the whole week. In other words, the manufacturer sold than 2.5 machines every second during the Thanksgiving week.
Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing was quoted by GameDaily as saying, “Holiday shoppers are finding value in our products' prices, and through a game-play experience that is unique to Nintendo.”
Microsoft has also reported selling twice the number of Xbox 360 consoles last week as compared to a week earlier. Even Sony confirmed that the “2009 holiday season got off to an amazing start for PlayStation.”
Price cut pays off
The thanksgiving week aside, the strong sales reported by Nintendo is also due to the price cuts introduced of late.
The manufacturer announced the first price cut in late September, following cutthroat competition from rivals like Sony and Microsoft. It slashed the price of its motion-sensing Wii by $50 to $199.99.
Since then the Kyoto-based company has witnessed an 85 percent increase in sales on weekly basis.
After trailing behind Sony’s PlayStation 3 in September, Nintendo has outperformed rivals and again regained the top position among all the game consoles for the month of October.
The NPD Group has recently reported that with the new price cut, Nintendo has sold 506,900 units during the October month, compared to 320,600 units sold by Sony and 249,700 units by Microsoft.
The November report is yet to be released, but the launch of new software like New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, and strong numbers posted last week point towards a strong start. With the holiday season kicking in, the industry is expected to maintain the momentum.
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