PS3 sales sniff at the heels of Xbox 360

Mike Bantick
Friday, 11 September 2009 08:11

Your IT - Entertainment

NPD Group has released the August North American sales for video-game hard and software.  Whilst the Nintendo DS and Wii are still king and queen of the race, the big mover was the PlayStation 3.  Overall however, the industry has suffered its sixth straight month of decline.


Here are the video game console sales within North America for the month of August.

* Wii - 277,400
* Xbox 360 - 215,400
* PS3 - 210,000
* NDS - 552,900
* PSP - 140,300
* PS2 - 105,900

Compared to July, whilst the PS2 is on a slow decline, all other hardware rose in monthly sales.  The Wii is up over 25K, the DS up 14K, the PSP is up 18K, the Xbox 360 is up 13K and the PS3 surprisingly up  almost 90K!

I say surprisingly as this figure does not include price cut PS3 Slim sales which was introduced to the market at the start of September.  Though NPD Group’s analyst  Anitia Frazier believes that the price cut has indeed impacted these figures.

 “The industry realized its sixth consecutive month-over-month decline, and while improved over the last several months, it's still a notable decline. The back four months of the year would have to be up 14% in aggregate for 2009 to come in flat in comparison to 2008 sales.” Frazier said.

“The price cuts implemented on the PS3 and 360 hardware already made an impact on unit sales, despite having been executed fairly late in the month. It will be interesting to see the full impact of the new price points on NPD September 2009 sales.”

Frazier also believes that movements in the Sony camp may not spark pricing upheaval in the rest of the market; “There is a lot of speculation about Wii and whether Nintendo will take a price cut as sales comps to last year show declines. I do think it's interesting to note that the Wii is still selling at levels comparable to what the PS2 was doing at about this point in its lifecycle.“

On the Software front, the US market loves its gridiron games leading up to the start of the new NFL season.  As a consequence Madden 10 leads the pack in August.  Batman:  Arkham Asylum also leaps in for some software sales action.

*  Madden NFL 10 (360) / Electronic Arts / 928,000
*  Wii Sports Resort w/ Wii Motion Plus (Wii) / Nintendo / 754,000
*  Madden NFL 10 (PS3) / Electronic Arts/ 665,000
*  Batman: Arkham Asylum (360) / Square Enix (Eidos) / 303,000
*  Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3) / Square Enix (Eidos) / 290,000
*  Madden NFL 10 (PS2) / Electronic Arts / 160,000
*  Dissidia: Final Fantasy (PSP) / Square Enix / 130,000
*  Wii Fit (Wii) / Nintendo / 128,000
*  Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii) / Nintendo / 120,000
*  Fossil Fighters (DS) / Nintendo / 92,000