September 08 NPD results. Halo 3 is better than a price cut.

[boffo]

Wii 687K
Nintendo DS 536.8K
Xbox 360 347.2K
PSP 238.1K
PlayStation 3 232.4K
PlayStation 2 173.5K

A much better month all around as all 3 main consoles saw large sales increases from August to September as the holiday season starts to approach. Past trends show that sales in September and October tend to be similar(except when Halo 3 decides to skew the numbers) so we'll likely have another month like this before the holiday buying gets things popping.

The Wii remained in the top spot just as it has all year, but saw it's sales increase from the previous month for the first time since March. The 687,000 units sold was it's 3rd highest total for the year behind only March and April when it sold 721,000 and 714,000 consoles respectively. The sales increase was 51.7% over last months total of 453,000 and leaves the Wii with lifetime sales of 12,548,000 units over 23 months for an average monthly total of 545,565 For the year it has topped 5 million sales with a total of 5,178,000 for and average of 575,333 per month this year. Not only did sales improve over last month, but they also improved over September of last year when 501,000 Wii's were sold. Sales continue to be way up over last year as it had only sold 3,440,000 at this point last year making this year's total of 5,178,000 almost exactly a 50% increase.

The 360 had the largest improvement over last month thanks to a price cut, however the lack of any must have new games likely prevented it from getting close to the Wii or even close to last September's 360 sales when Halo 3 came out. The 347,000 units sold was their highest total of the year far eclipsing the previous high of 262,000 set in March and it was 78% higher than what they sold in August. This puts them at 11,240,000 consoles lifetime or 321,143 per month since launch 35 months ago. For the year they just topped the 2 million mark as it has reached 2,089,000 or 232,111 a month. Even with that improvement they ended up well back of last September's sales number of 528,000 when Halo 3 was released, although it was a big increase over the 259,000 360's that were sold in September of 2006. It leaves the 360 as being very consistent year-over-year as it had sold 2,066,000 at this point in 2006, vs. 2,223,000 in 2007, and 2,089,000 so far this year. That puts sales up 1.1% over 2006 and down 6% from last year.

The PS3 had it's best month since the launch of Metal Gear Solid 4 but it was still just a middle of the road sales month for them. 5 highest and 5th lowest sales month for the year. The 232,000 units sold was a 25.4% jump over last month's 185,000 and leaves the PS3 at 5,497,000 sales lifetime or 239,000 a month in the 23 months since launch. So far this year it has sold 2,251,000 which is 250,111 per month. For the 9th straight month this year they have improved their sales numbers over the same month the previous year having sold only 119,000 consoles last September. In fact at this point last year only 1,173,000 PS3's had been sold compared to 2,251,000 this year which marks a 91.9% increase in sales from last year to this year, although it didn't really have anywhere to go but up.

So that covers September and as I said expect more of the same in October as previous years have shown although we'll see if the 360 price cut will mean a sustained increase in sales or if it'll just be a short term thing.

[AkaneJones]

I see this a proof that advertising plus name and connected pedigree work. Nothing more really is evident from this. If they'd slapped Halo 3 on any other generic FPS, as long as it wasn't Haze quality, the thing would have sold the same. But you've got to wonder how much money MS lost on that advertising campaign in the process. Who puts games ads on Mountain Dew, and makes it a special type?

The fact is price drops aren't going to do that much. I mean if price drops were that important, why didn't the GameCube beat the XBox in sales outside of Japan? The thing was $99 and you got Smash Bros., Resident Evil 4, and a whole bunch of really big titles of that generation, so why lack of sales? Obviously the answer is initial launch prince point is import but subsequent prices drops don't mean that much.