Strong January sales show plenty of Wii left in the tank

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Thursday, 22 February 2007

Statistics from research firm NPD show that Nintendo’s Wii outsold the Xbox 360, the PS2 and the PS3 in the US, with plenty more Wii’s on the way despite shortages caused by its success!

Nintendo’s Wii, feared at first to end up being the minnow in the next-gen console wars, has come out fighting with January sales figures showing that the Wii sold 436,000 units in the US in January, outselling the Xbox 360 at 294,000 units, the PS3 at 244,000 units and the PS2 – a seven year old games console outselling the PS3 with nearly 300,000 units sold.

Interestingly, this data didn’t come from NPD direct, but was ‘preliminary data’ from NPD and was released by Microsoft.

Part of this success is due to the Wii’s lower price point that the Xbox 360 and the PS3, and it’s innovative motion control system that only the PS3 can claim to emulate to some degree. Nintendo also believe that they would have been able to sell even more Wii games consoles – if only they had been able to produce enough of them in time.

An article at the Seattle Post-Intelligence quotes Perrin Kaplan, vice president of marketing at Nintendo of America as saying that: “I do think that we're selling to additional and different customers [compared with the competition]. We've had an incredibly healthy start and we think there's going to be a pretty long tail on this product.”

A long tail is exactly what Microsoft hopes the Xbox 360 will enjoy in the future, when they release the Xbox 360’s successor in a few years time, as explained at an article at 1up.com. This is because the PS2 clearly continues enjoying massive sales, outselling the PS3 and even the Xbox 360 in January, while development of titles for the original Xbox effectively ended once the Xbox 360 became available.

That said, Microsoft were very happy with their January sales, outselling its main competition, the PS3, by 50,000 units – but one month of sales does not a long term trend make. The PS3 is expected to lift in sales as new titles emerge and the popularity and selection of movies on Blu-ray disc increases.

In an indication of Microsoft thinking this might also be a possibility, their previous up-to 15 million units sold by June 2007 prediction has been dropped to 12 million – although Microsoft must have some big plans up their sleeve, from price cuts to massive promotion to keep the Xbox 360 in the front of consumers’ minds despite the oncoming PS3 onslaught, and the continuing success of the Wii, of which new shipments are regularly arriving into the profitable US market.
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