Culture

October NPD: Wii Wins, <cite>Uncharted</cite> Charts

The U.S. videogame market fell 19% versus last year in October 2009, although certain games showed solid performance, the NPD Group reported Thursday. Average weekly sales of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 declined from last month, NPD said, although sales of PSP, Nintendo DS and Wii were up. PlayStation 3’s price cut did keep the […]

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The U.S. videogame market fell 19% versus last year in October 2009, although certain games showed solid performance, the NPD Group reported Thursday.

Average weekly sales of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 declined from last month, NPD said, although sales of PSP, Nintendo DS and Wii were up. PlayStation 3's price cut did keep the console ahead of Microsoft's Xbox 360.

Sony's excellent PlayStation 3 game *Uncharted 2: Among Thieves *(above) enjoyed a well-deserved run at the top of the software charts, followed closely by Nintendo's Wii Fit Plus.

NPD said that "roughly half" the sales of Nintendo's upgraded exercise game were the $100 version bundled with the Balance Board controller, suggesting that it is bringing many new players into the franchise.

U.S. Hardware Sales, October 2009
  1. Wii 506.9K
  2. Nintendo DS 457.6K
  3. PlayStation 3 320.6K
  4. Xbox 360 249.7K
  5. PSP 174.6K
  6. PlayStation 2 117.8K

Software sales and analysis below.

U.S. Top Ten Software Sales, October 2009
  1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3, Sony) 537,000
  2. Wii Fit Plus (Wii, Nintendo) 441,000
  3. *Borderlands *(360, Take 2) 418,000
  4. Wii Sports Resort (Wii, Nintendo) 314,000
  5. NBA 2K10 (360, Take 2) 311,000
  6. Halo 3: ODST (360, Microsoft) 271,000
  7. NBA 2K10 (PS3, Take 2) 213,000
  8. Forza Motorsport 3 (360, Microsoft) 175,000
  9. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (DS, Square Enix) 169,000
  10. FIFA Soccer 10 (360, Electronic Arts) 156,000

One of the big questions going into this holiday season was always whether Nintendo would be able to shore up its software lineup with games that, unlike Wii Music, its casual audience was going to want to buy. If Wii Fit Plus can, as NPD has pointed out, bring in many new customers as well as give current Balance Board users something new to do with the hardware, then combined with Wii Sports Resort Nintendo has probably done just barely enough to shore up its expanded-audience customers for another holiday.

We can add to this the wildcard of New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Yes, it's going to sell well, but the question is whether it does what the Nintendo DS version of the series did and explode, becoming a massive casual success to rival Brain Age.

Sony has to be happy that it's beating the Xbox 360, but a month-on-month sales decline heading into the holiday season the month after a massive price cut and hardware refresh doesn't sound like entirely positive news.

NPD points out that, generally speaking, its research suggests that the holiday season could be a restrained one all around: "Our latest Economy Tracker indicated that although consumers' general opinion about the economy is improving, their outlook on their own personal situation is worsening. If consumers' personal outlook continues to erode, they could very well be much more conservative with their holiday shopping this year," said a spokesperson in an emailed statement.

Oh, and if you're still following the saga of how many copies did Beatles Rock Band sell on each platform, the update for this month is that we have no idea, since everything in the music category slid off the Top 10.

Image courtesy Sony

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