NPD February report, same story, much wider margins

[Julius Seeker]

Supply issues continued throughout February, despite that the DS and Wii have a very healthy lead over the competition in the US and the true story of how January would have been comes to light. Capcom and activision seem to be dominating the top software charts. On sales per system, it was reported that DS actually had the highest amount of software sales at 3.6 million, despite only having a single game in the top 10; Wii followed at 2.9 million software sales. PS2 appears to be holding on as nintendo's largest contender. Overall, these are massive sales for February particularly considering that all the big games for Wii are coming in the following months, the games industry is indeed growing. It will be very interesting to see how Wii does over the next few months with three highly anticipated titles being released: Smash in March, Mario Kart in April (end of April though), and Wii Fit in May. PS3 has improved, and continues to defeat Xbox 360 this month.


Total Hardware:

Nintendo DS 587,600
Wii 432,000
Playstation 2 351,800
Playstation 3 280,800
Xbox 360 254,600
Playstation Portable 243,100


TOP-SELLING SOFTWARE - FEBRUARY 2008

Title / Publisher / Release Date / Units
1) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare* (360) / Activision / 7-Nov 296.2K
2) Devil May Cry 4* (360) / Capcom 8-Feb / 295.2k
3) Wii Play W/ Remote* (Wii) / Nintendo / 7-Feb 289.7K
4) Devil May Cry 4* (PS3) / Capcom / 8-Feb / 233.5K
5) Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock* (Wii) / Activision / 7-Oct / 222.9K
6) Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games (DS) / Sega / 8-Jan / 205.6K
7) Lost Odyssey (360) / Microsoft / 8-Feb 203.6K
Turok (360) Touchstone/ 8-Jan/ 197.7K
9) Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock* (PS2) Activision / 7-Oct / 183.8K
10) Rock Band* (360) / MTV Games, Electronic Arts / 7-Nov / 161.8K

[SineSwiper]

Looks like 360 is the leader in software sales here, despite the drop in console sales. The only thing from PS3 even on the list is DMC4, and the 360 still beat it in DMC4 sales. So, what are people buying with their PS3s?

Also, I see that WiiPlay is STILL on the list. I guess every sale in a Wii console merits a copy of WiiPlay. (Also, I think it was a brilliant decision to bundle a game with the remote, so that fanboys can site bogus sales figures that skew in favor of Nintendo, just because of a free remote.)

Oddly enough, where's Smash Brothers in this list? I thought that was supposed to be the "next big hit" for the Wii.

[Julius Seeker]

Read my post above, it explains why Smash isn't on the February NPD chart.

[Zeus]

Sine, Smash Bros came out on March 9. This is the February figures

Two things amaze me here:
1) The staying power of CoD4 on the 360. Who woulda guessed that the game that came out what, 5 weeks after Halo, would STILL be #1 while Halo is long gone off the list?

2) Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii is the best selling version LTD

[Julius Seeker]

The Wii version of Guitar Hero is ranked where it is because of astronomical supply issues dealing with the actual guitars since the time of its release. The Wii was the only system that still yet didn't have Guitars available for it until the release of Guitar Hero 3. If the supply had been there earlier, then the sales would have occurred earlier.

[SineSwiper]

Screw that, Guitar Hero 3 for the PS TWO is still high on the list. I guess plenty of people haven't committed to a next-gen console, so they are still stuck on the PS2.

Surprised that Rock Band isn't higher on the list. I guess the game is still pretty expensive.

[Zeus]

The Wii version of GH3 is approaching the 2M mark. It has had as much supply issues as any other version but it has also sold more than any other or close to it. I remember back in December it being only something like 80k or so behind the 360 version for the lead and it has outsold it the last couple of months. That's a big shock to me

On a side note, if you look at the Jap figures, the PSP has actually beaten the DS for all of February and the first couple of weeks of March. I think the PSP is actually very close to the DS now in terms of overall sales for 2008. Not sure if it's a supply issue or not, but considering that there are 22 million sold there (as of this week) and the top 30 software sales are still dominated by the DS, there may actually be a situation where they're approaching market saturation. Their sales have declined weekly from the holiday season and while the PSPs have increased. I'm interested to see if it continues, I didn't think it would hit saturation this early over there.

The US is a different matter, it's still averaging over 125k sold per week. Nuts

[Julius Seeker]

The PS2 is outselling the 360, PS3, and PSP here in North America, and by a fairly large margin. I would say that's quite good; if you go to the stores in a lot of areas in North America, it is usually still designated the most shelf space.

As for the DS and Japan situation, the fact that the DS is still selling is testiment to the strength of the market now. The DS has pushed past the 21 million barrier (the barrier that several systems reached, but stopped selling afterwards). The huge deal with it is that the biggest games of its generation have yet to be released for it.

I am really excited to see what sort of device Nintendo creates to succeed this machine.