Australian November Sales Numbers

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http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,24812784-5014239,00.html

 

Video game bonanza tipped following Kevin Rudd's handout

By Greg Thom

Herald Sun

December 17, 2008 08:03am

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd's $10.4 billion economic stimulus package for families has helped fuel a pre-Christmas video game bonanza.

The latest official sales figures covering the five weeks to December 6 show the games market is up 39 per cent on the same period last year.

Australians bought more than 130,000 Nintendo Wii, 45,700 Xbox 360 and 26,000 PS3 games machines.

Anecdotal evidence from retailers revealed the sale of new game consoles doubled in some cases the day after consumers received the Federal Government's $1000 bonus in their bank accounts.

Microsoft marketing manager Jeremy Hinton said pre-Christmas Xbox 360 sales had been given a significant boost by the government handout.

He said that on the day the federal financial fillip kicked in last Wednesday - usually a quiet day for games outlets - some shop owners made frantic calls requesting more stock after being rushed by cashed-up shoppers.

"We had retailers on the phone saying, 'Quick, we've almost sold out (of Xbox 360 consoles). We need more stock now,' " Mr Hinton told the Herald Sun.

"We had one of our retailers call us and say he sold 300 consoles on Tuesday and when the money kicked in by early Wednesday had sold 800."

The sales figures show that while the global economic uncertainty has made many consumers cautious, the video games market has remained largely immune.

The big winner was the Nintendo Wii.

Shoppers walked out the door with an extraordinary 130,000 of the consoles under their arms in the five weeks to December 6 - twice as many as for the same time last year.

The combination of an innovative, wireless motion controller system and a solid stable of family-friendly, socially-inclusive games that encourage participants to get off the couch in front of their TV sets, has seen the $399 games machine fly off store shelves.

Microsoft recently lowered the Xbox 360's price to between $299 and $549 to compete with the Wii, while Sony introduced a new 80GB PS3 model in time for the Christmas season.