Right. Up untill recently, Oyvoyv compiled the WorldWide yearly using the weeklies (or something) roughly once a month. He's gone now, so he's not going to make a thread.

Of course, getting the data is piece of cake now. There's a page that has all the data! Still, the discussions in those threads always hit me as rather interesting. Not because of the OP, but because it was actually sales related, which is, surprisingly, rather rare nowadays.

Thanks to VGChartz 2.0, here's the link. http://vgchartz.com/yearly.php

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm going to do some comparisons between 08 and 09 here. If it hits you as uninteresting, skip right to the comments.

First off, it's just the HW. You probably all know this, but I decided to add it in anyway. It is, of course, in the same timeframe. Up untill week ending 23/24th may. 

Machine - 2008 - 2009 - difference.

DS - 8.44M - 9.82M - Up 1.38M - Up 16.35% 

Wii - 7.14M - 6.87M - Down 0.27M - Down Down 3.78%

X360 - 2.71M - 3.63M - Up 0.92M - Up 33.9%

PsP - 4.58M - 3.54M - Down 1.04M - Down 22.7%

Ps3 - 3.6M - 3.29M - Down 0.31M - Down 8.6%

Ps2 -  2.9M - 1.65M - Down 1.25M - Down 43.1%

Total:  29.37M - 28.8M . Down 0.57M - Down 1.9%

Then, over to something that's not so obvious; software. Well, naturally, I'd believe there's going to be a fair increase in software sold, as the bases are larger. This might not be the case for DS and PsP thought. (I suggest thinking about what you think will be the situation will be before you read on)

Machine - 2008 - 2009 - difference

DS - 39.06M - 50.19M - Up 11.13M - Up 28.5%

Wii - 48.25M - 54M - Up 5.75M - Up 11.91%

X360 - 29.62M - 32M - Up 2.38M - Up 8%

PsP - 12.43M - 11.69M - Down 0.74M - Down 5.9%

Ps3 - 21.9M - 25.24M - Up 3.34M - Up 15.25%

Ps2 - ~ 16M - 9.5M - Down 6.5M - Down 40.6%

Total: 167.26M - 182.62M - Up 15.36M - Up 9.2%

If you exclude the DS, software sold is hardly up at all. I find that incredibly odd really, seeing as the total number of machines have increased by around 35%.

And finally, some publisher stuff.

Publisher - total sold in 2009 - market share

Nintendo - 42.2M - 23.1%

Electronic Arts - 20.5M - 11.2%

(Activision + Activision-Blizzard combined - 16.47M)

Ubisoft - 14.8M - 8.1%

Activision - 9.95M - 5.44%

Capcom - 8.95M - 4.9%

THQ - 8.68M - 4.75%

Sony - 7.71M - 4.22%

Sega - 7.23M - 3.96%

Take Two - 6.68M - 3.65%

Activision Blizzard - 6.53M - 3.57%

Total of top 10: 133M - 72.9%

Shockingly enough, the top 10 account for nearly 3/4th of the total software sold.

Finally, the end of the final part

Nintendo accounts for 40.5% of the total software sold on their machines.

Sony accounts for 15% of the total software sold on their machines.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That turned out rather long really. If there's any incorrect data, please tell. This is my first thread, so it would be great if I could get some feedback on what to improve.

All I ask is you change the text colours.

How about some nice pastilles, very nice with the grey background.:

DS
Wii
X360
PSP
PS3
PS2

Also, bare in mind that while it is nice to have them combined, the PAL software in particular is still sketchy, so games published by Sony and Nintendo and the other big publishers are more likely to have better up to date data. So while I am actually not suprised the top 10 publishers make up 3/4 of the sales (I thought it could be more tbh) It will be slightly skewed in their favour at the moment.

The lack of improvement on the SW must be due to the big releases last year, like GTAIV and MKWii. The advantage the PS3 have over the others(15,25% increase) can be credited to the series of big releases in Japan, I think.

BTW, is worth to notice that the PS3 HW numbers are still above last year X360 numbers, wich shows the real effect the price cut had. If there wasn't any price cut, the x360 probably would be lower than last year, and also lower than PS3, if the HW were the same for the system. It shows that sony must find a way to cut the price, since it still have some Brand advantage over MS. It can give them the edge to gain a profitable user base, i.e. one big enough to produce a healthy number of mln sellers and also secure 3rd parties or maybe one or two exclusives(3rd parties I mean).