Andre Yoskowitz
17 Mar 2007 12:19
As February came to a close, one thing was very clear. Nintendo was blowing away the competition in console sales. The company sold 485,000 DS units and 335,000 Wii consoles for the month. During the same period Microsoft's Xbox360 sold 228,000 units and Sony's PlayStation 3 lagged behind with 127,000 units sold.
By using some simple math, we can see that Nintendo's latest console, the Wii, almost outsold it main competitors' combined sales for the month.
However, Sony's PlayStation2 continued to see well, selling almost 300,000 consoles for the month.
Nintendo noted that the game systems "represented 54 percent of all hardware sales in February, more than those of all other manufacturers combined."
In general, all console sales on a "year-to-date" basis increased by 106% from 2006.
The report was not a complete loss for Microsoft and Sony however. The PlayStation 2 sales were a shining spot and so was the best seller Guitar Hero 2. Crackdown and Gears of War sold very strongly for Microsoft.
Why are the Nintendo consoles selling so well? Envisioneering Group Research Director Richard Doherty gives a simple answer: "Keeping it simple, stupid, is winning...Both Wii and the DS don't require big instruction books and that's expanded the audience...Sony and Microsoft took a different path, producing consoles of stunning power and complexity ... and price."
"They've gotten complicated and both companies are following a core gamer audience ... whereas Wii and DS are working for both young and old [newcomers to gaming]...the DS has games that go down to pre-school level and the Wii has games where you don't even need to crack the instruction manual at all to play."
It is good to see a console war many of us did not expect.
Source:
TechNewsWorld