Money Matters, Simplified.
U.S. video-games sales rise 4% in December
The market research company The NDP Group Inc., in its monthly report released Wednesday, reported 4 percent rise in the December sales of consoles, portable players and software in the United States.
by Priyanka - January 15, 2010 - comments
Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Co.’s Wii consoles contributed in improving the sales of video games software and hardware to a record number, as per the market research group.
Anita Frazier, an analyst at The NDP Group, said in a statement, "When we started the last decade, video game industry sales, including PC games, totaled $7.98 billion in 2000. In ten years, the industry has changed dramatically in many ways, but most importantly it was grown over those years by more than 250 percent at retail alone."
PS3 led the way with 87 percent jump to 1.36 million units, followed by Wii with 77 percent increase to 3.81 million units, the largest monthly sales ever for the two companies, according to NDP reports.
Best-sellers of the year
The NDP Group also released the list of 10-bestselling console games of the year, where the Nintendo software and Xbox 360 releases dominated. Here are the bestsellers of the year gone by:
1. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2; publisher-Activision; platform- Xbox 360
2. Wii Sports Resort; publisher-Nintendo; platform-Wii
3. New Super Mario Bros. Wii; publisher-Nintendo; platform-Wii
4. Wii Fit; publisher-Nintendo; platform-Wii
5. Wii Fit Plus; publisher-Nintendo; platform-Wii
6. Mario Kart Wii; publisher-Nintendo; platform-Wii
7. Wii Play; publisher-Nintendo; platform-Wii
8. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2; publisher-Activision; platform-PS3
9. Halo 3: ODST; publisher-Microsoft; platform-Xbox 360
10. Pokeman Platinum; publisher-Nintendo; platform-DS
Hardware sales figures for December
- Nintendo Wii—3,810,000
- Nintendo DS—3,310,000
- Sony PlayStation 3—1,360,000
- Microsoft’s Xbox 360—1,310,000
- Sony’s PlayStation Portable—654,700
- Sony’s PlayStation 2—333,200
Readers react online to the NPD reports
An online reader dablacklisted wrote on 1up.com, “Okay, here’s the way it goes it terms of sells. [sic] 1. Wii 2. 360 3. PS3. Wow we are 5yrs into this shit and it ain't changing for anyone! Sorry for you loyal Sony fans out there but Nintendo and MS have software sells tied up too. Give it 2 more years (if that) and we'll start seeing the new consoles from Sony or MS.”
Another online reader HighWindXIX posted on the same site, “Good job Sony first of all for beating XBOX!! But this isn't a fanboy post. No, this a post of wonderment. How is it possible that Uncharted 2 is selling so poorly? It’s a fantastic game that has gotten tons of attention and support from the media. Why the poor sales? I've never met anyone who didn't like it . . .”