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It's that time again, folks. Break out the Jean Claude Van Damme animated GIFs and gather 'round the proverbial gaming campfire, as the NPD Group has released the sales data for October 2007. The NPD Group has previously announced monthly hardware numbers wouldn't be publicly available this month, but public outcry reversed the decision, albeit at the permission of the Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.
As expected, Xbox 360 was unable to retain the same sales numbers in a post-Halo 3 world, but with only a 30% drop month-to-month, Microsoft appears poised to have an extremely strong holiday season. Still, it's nothing in the face of Nintendo's two-pronged dominance with the DS and Wii. In the absence of a major release, Wii sales actually increased by 18,000 from the previous month, while DS took a hardly noticeable dip. As for PlayStation 3? The release of Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction appears to have little impact, as hardware sales dropped 2,000 month-to-month. D'oh.

Software sales for October are front-loaded by Bungie's Halo 3. While October's 433,800 sales are nothing compared to September's 3.3 million, nearly half a million more is nothing to sneeze at. In fact, Halo 3's cumulative sales currently stand at 3.7 million, which outpaces the combined sales of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl at 3.6 million. The Orange Box turned in at a disappointing 7th place in the software top ten, while Insomniac's latest Ratchet didn't show up at all, despite having two weeks on shelves.

Regarding current state of the industry:
"This year sales have already achieved the annual sales number for 2005 - and the two biggest months are yet to come. I think we'll see not only record-breaking revenues but record-breaking year-over-year growth when the final numbers are tallied."

Regarding PS3 sales after price reduction:
"Remember that the PS3 price cut came in November so we'll have to wait until our data comes out next month to see the effect of that cut on retail sell-through of the hardware.

Regarding Guitar Hero III sales:
"Guitar Hero has certainly established itself among the elite video games properties. Very few games sell in excess of 1 million units in their first month in market, but Guitar Hero III did easily with combined sales of 1.4 million units in only 6 days. Since it has broad appeal, it's also the type of game that should continue to do very well throughout the holidays."

Regarding Accessory Sales:
"Accessory sales increased sharply coinciding with hardware sales as consumers continue to pick up additional controllers to use with their new systems. Because of Guitar Hero, guitar controllers also had a great month and helped drive some of the 94% year-over year increase in accessories."

The Nintendo Wii is back on top in October after Xbox 360's Halo 3-driven spike. How can Nintendo maintain this momentum through the holidays and beyond? Next-Gen spoke with Nintendo of America's marketing chief George Harrison.
Xbox 360's September victory over the Nintendo Wii's hardware unit sales appears to have been short-lived. The Wii and DS commanded hardware unit sales in the US for October, according to The NPD Group, with sales of 519,000 and 458,000, respectively, easily capturing the top two hardware slots.

By comparison, Xbox 360 sold 366,000 (down from September's 528,000) and PlayStation 3 sold 121,000 (on par with September's 119,000).

It appears that with October's sales, Wii and DS are already beginning to lift off as early holiday shoppers initiate the rush. Here, Harrison explains what Nintendo will do to maintain its current momentum, how many consoles it plans to deliver to shelves in the coming months and what Nintendo is doing about competitors' holiday pricing strategies.

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So it looks like the Wii is back on top for October…

Early holiday shoppers in October kind of set the pace. If this is any indication, then we should do really well for the holidays.

What’s Nintendo’s strategy for keeping this momentum going?

First is to try to get as much hardware into the market as possible, and we’re obviously working hard to do that. We’re still expecting some shortages in December. But we’re not going to be pulling back on our marketing. So even though we’ll be selling everything we can get, we’ll continue full-blast with our outreach through PR, and through paid advertising and other things.

We just shipped Super Mario Galaxy on Monday, and that’s really our biggest title for the year, so we think that’ll fuel the demand further.

The DS is still selling well, with almost 500,000 for October in the US. It seems like everyone already owns one, but there are still hundreds of thousands of people coming out of the woodwork to buy them every month. When does Nintendo think DS hardware sales will start to drop off, or is there no end in sight?



DS is barely at half of the life-to-date sales that we achieved on our last generation of Game Boy.For DS, we think there’s still a huge amount of potential left. We’re barely at half of the life-to-date sales that we achieved on our last generation of Game Boy. When we talk about the expanded audience, we’re really talking about people who have not necessarily bought a Nintendo DS. So we think there’s a huge additional potential.

On a calendar year basis, when you see the December NPD, that will be a high water mark for us in terms of handheld sales. We think it’s got ongoing potential for us. Importantly, it’s kind of the stalking horse. We feel these expanding gamers might first try a DS and then be drawn into the Wii.

Microsoft is trying to get a piece of the family-oriented, casual gamer type market with the $280 Xbox 360 Arcade. Does Nintendo worry that with Wii being in short supply, people are going to turn to that package?

It’s hard to know what will happen if people can’t find a Wii. In general, we think that the real key for us is the Wii’s simple interface, same with the DS. In the end, we think the desire will be there for the Wii, and we’ll do everything we can to keep the market supplied.

As Christmas approaches, what kind of output is Nintendo expecting as far as production of hardware? How many Wiis are we going to be seeing at retail in November and December?

I can’t give an exact number for November and December. We had to make our final decision on how much to produce each month for the holidays back in the summer. It takes about five months for us to increase the actual monthly rate of production. We’re at a rate now worldwide of about 1.8 million Wiis produced every month, and that’s going to sustain itself until we get on top of this. We’re trying to make decisions on almost a weekly basis about which market to ship the product to, because in Japan it’s a big success, and same in Europe.

It’s almost an embarrassment of opportunity in terms of where to place those Wii hardware units.

How are shipments being split up between the markets?

We’re really trying to follow each market’s performance. We review the performance every couple of weeks and try to have the inventory be as productive as possible, in other words, not to have it sitting in warehouse, but on store shelves. Each territory is doing the best they can to increase the sales for Wii and then fighting for the share of the available production.

How are these being shipped? Is there any need to go air freight or is it all going by boat?

It’s generally all coming in by boat from China. It takes about 10 days on the water to get to Seattle, then it takes about another 10 days to get them out onto store shelves themselves. That’s why the decisions about what we can actually achieve in the holidays were really affected by inventory that we’ve received already and how we planned to spread that inventory across retailers.

Looking at October again, Wii sold almost 600,000, and you expect that just to accelerate throughout the holidays. What about after the holidays? Do you think hardware sales will trail off considerably?

We're trying to encourage third parties to take the time and effort to make something unique, not just to throw something out on Wii because it's the fast-selling system.It’ll probably slow down sometime in January, but what really surprised us in 2007 was that the holiday sales after the launch of Wii didn’t slow down in February or March. What caused us to fall behind was supply.

We believe that through the expanded audience, the price point of $250 for the Wii system with Wii Sports, people can jump in at any time. We have some really strong titles coming in the early part of next year; Super Smash Bros. in February and not too long after that, Mario Kart and Wii Fit. So we’re going to have a really strong lineup the first half of the year, and hardware sales should continue to be very, very strong.

Onto software, do you sense that third parties are becoming less wary about bringing games to the Wii?

We think so. Certainly there’s a strong lineup of third party titles, and we’re trying to encourage them to make them. But we’re also trying to encourage third parties to take the time and effort to make something unique, not just to sort of throw something out on Wii because the Wii’s the fast-selling system. I think the ones that have spent the most time in the box are the ones that are going to be the most successful this holiday.

PlayStation 3 still lagged considerably behind in October. There are new reports, though, that hardware sales have gone up since the system’s price drop. But is the PS3 on Nintendo’s radar at all?

Not really. We don’t focus a lot on the competition. It appears to us that Sony and Microsoft are fighting over the same customer and swapping market share. Our performance seems to be independent of those two.

Chat-Minou a écrit :La PS3 qui se vend moins que la PS2

La baisse de prix et le statut de lecteur blu-ray le moins cher du marché, dans un pays où le format est sur le point de définitivement gagner la guerre face au HD-DVD, offre malgré tout un bon potentiel pour les fêtes.

The_lascar a écrit :Ouais, les grands films de noël, c'est quand même Spiderman, Ratatouille et Pirates des Caraïbes. Enfin y a pas que ceux là, mais ceux là sont des exclusivités Blu-ray, alors que les autres, Shrek et Harry Potter, sortent sur les deux formats. Les films Sony et Disney exclus, ça pese sacrément lourd dans la balance pour ce noël :o. Au début de l'année on entendait beaucoup parler de l'avis des revendeurs qui voulaient qu'un des deux camps gagne rapidement pour ne pas avoir à proposer deux formats différents, surtout d'ici la période de fin d'année où c'est la folie et ils ont pas la place suffisante.

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