DLR Video Game Sales Watch (12/11/09)

The videogame industry once again proved that it is recession resistant during November.

Software sales increased 10% to $2.91 billion in November, while hardware sales increased 10% to $1.21 billion. In comparison, U.S. retail sales fell 1.8% in November.

On the software side, the big winners were Nintendo (NTDOY.PK) and Activision Blizzard (ATVI). Nintendo had four titles in the top 10 – Wii Play, Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii, and Wii Music – cumulatively selling over 2.4 million units. Activision Blizzard had three titles in the top 10 – Call of Duty: World at War (for both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) and Guitar Hero World Tour for Nintendo Wii – selling nearly 2.5 million units. Microsoft (MSFT) had the month’s best selling game with Gears of War 2, which sold nearly 1.6 million copies.

Call of Duty: World at War’s strong sales – over two million units sold on just the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (the game was also released for Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS and PC) – show the strength of the franchise following last year’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Critics were unsure that the publisher would be able to follow up on the success of Call of Duty 4 since World at War takes the series back to World War II and the firm handed the development reigns to a different developer. The publisher’s success stands in contrast to Electronic Arts (ERTS), which only had one title in the top ten (Left 4 Dead with over 400,000 units sold).

On the hardware side, Nintendo once again dominated the sales charts. Its Wii and DS platforms were the best selling consoles of the month – selling over 1.2 million and nearly 1.1 million units, respectively. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 managed to outsell Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation 3 by more than a 2:1 ratio for the first time this year.

In 2008, Nintendo has sold 7.22 million Wiis, Microsoft has sold 3.30 million Xbox 360s, and Sony has sold 2.82 million PlayStation 3s in the United States. Sony has managed outsell Microsoft 5 out of 11 times this year – most notably in June when it outsold Microsoft by almost double due to the release of Metal Gear Solid 4 – but Microsoft’s Xbox 360 has outsold the PlayStation 3 for the past 4 months.

Life-to-date, Nintendo has sold 14.59 million Wiis, Microsoft has sold 12.45 million Xbox 360s, and Sony has sold 6.06 million PlayStation 3s. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 launched approximately one year earlier than the Wii and PlayStation 3.

November 2008 Hardware Sales

• Wii: 2,040,000
• DS: 1,570,000
• Xbox 360: 836,000
• PSP: 421,000
• PS3: 378,000
• PS2: 206,000

November 2008 Software Sales

1. Gears of War 2 – Xbox 360; Microsoft – 1.56 million
2. Call of Duty: World at War – Xbox 360; Activision – 1.41 million
3. Wii Play w/ remote – Wii; Nintendo – 796K
4. Wii Fit – Wii; Nintendo – 697K
5. Mario Kart – Wii; Nintendo – 637K
6. Call of Duty: World at War – PS3; Activision – 597K
7. Guitar Hero: World Tour – Wii; Activision – 475K
8. Left 4 Dead – Xbox 360; Electronic Arts – 410K
9. Resistance 2 – PS3; Sony CEA – 385K
10. Wii Music – Wii; Nintendo – 297K

Source

November NPD: Modern Warfare Shifts 6 Million Copies

Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 javelin-bombed every other videogame in the month of November, selling an astonishing 6 million copies, the NPD Group reported Thursday.

The shooter sold 4.2 million units on Xbox 360 and 1.87 million on PlayStation 3 in the U.S. last month. Other big winners were New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Assassin’s Creed II, but nothing even came close to Call of Duty.

On the hardware front, Wii and Nintendo DS ruled all, selling over a million units each. Despite a price drop and hardware refresh renewing interest in Sony’s PlayStation 3, it still came in third place behind the Xbox 360 this month, which is $100 cheaper.

Hardware Sales, November 2009

1. Nintendo DS 1.70M
2. Wii 1.26M
3. Xbox 360 819.5K
4. PlayStation 3 710.4K
5. PSP 293.9K
6. PlayStation 2 203.1K

Software numbers and scattered thoughts below.

Top Ten Software Sales, November 2009

1. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (360, Activision Blizzard) 4,200,000
2. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3, Activision Blizzard) 1,870,000
3. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii, Nintendo Of America) 1,390,000
4. Assassin’s Creed II (360, Ubisoft) 794,700
5. Left 4 Dead 2 (360, Electronic Arts) 744,000
6. Wii Sports Resort (Wii, Nintendo Of America) 720,200
7. Wii Fit Plus (Wii, Nintendo Of America) 679,000
8. Assassin’s Creed II (PS3, Ubisoft) 448,400
9. Dragon Age: Origins (360, Electronic Arts) 362,100
10. Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii, Nintendo Of America) 315,000

Overall, the games industry is down 7.6% over last year. This is higher than it would have been thanks to astonishing sales of Modern Warfare 2 — analyst Jesse Divnich of EEDAR pointed out in an email that the game accounted for twenty freaking percent of all software sales for the month, in dollars.

The Nintendo DS set a sales record, selling more units than any portable game console ever has in the month of November. The flipside to this coin for Nintendo is that the all-time record is held by Wii, which moved over 2 million units last Black Friday and dropped down by nearly 40 percent this month.

In fact, everything was down this month over last year except DS and PS3, which is up 87 percent, clearly illustrating that the latest price drop really flipped a switch in consumers’ minds as to the value proposition put forth by Sony’s box.

The big surprise in terms of hardware sales is PSP. Yes, percentagewise it didn’t drop as much as Wii, but Wii at least can say that it is the number-one videogame console by a nice wide margin. PSP just got its ass kicked, without qualification.

Nintendo’s big four games will continue to move throughout the holiday selling season, but by February or March we should know whether any of the newcomers will be the sort of long tail products that the company has come to rely on — that is, whether they’ll continue to pop up on the Top Ten charts every month after their contemporaries have long dropped off the map.

Wii Sports Resort has the best chance of doing this, I think. I will be very interested to see if New Super Mario Bros. Wii has the right stuff — whether it drops out of view like Mario Galaxy or keeps selling like gangbusters like New Super Mario Bros. DS. In other words: Is it the software, or is is the system?

Image courtesy Activision