The January 2009 NPD Thread (Data @ 6:30 PM EST)

[Esmoreit]

FishyJoe said:

The Nintendo spin:

Nintendo kicked off 2009 the same way it finished 2008: with a bang. While the video game industry grew by $150 million (12 percent) year-on-year, Nintendo’s total sales grew by $300 million in January, offsetting declines on other platforms.

Sales of the Wii™ console in January were up 148 percent over January 2007, with nearly 680,000 units sold, according to the independent NPD Group, which tracks video game sales in the United States. Since Wii launched in November 2006, it has sold more than 18 million units in the United States.

Sales of the Nintendo DS™ system in January were also up 99 percent over January 2007, and it once again was the top-selling portable system with more than 510,000 units sold. Since Nintendo DS launched in November 2004, it has sold more than 28 million units in the United States.

“Nintendo’s significant contribution to January’s industry growth validates our internal research showing that Nintendo continues to expand the gaming audience,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “We are excited to see that consumers, new and existing, are choosing to entertain themselves in new ways with the diversity of our software lineup.”

Similar momentum was witnessed in software sales, with 20 of the top 30 games of January made for Nintendo systems. Of those, five games made for Nintendo systems finished in the top 10 best-sellers of January. These games include Wii Fit™ at No. 1 with more than 777,000 sold, Wii Play™ at No. 2 with nearly 415,000 sold, Mario Kart™ Wii at No. 3 with more than 292,000 sold, New Super Mario Bros. for Nintendo DS at No. 7 with nearly 135,000 sold, and Mario Kart™ DS at No. 8 with more than 132,000 sold.

First time I see somewhat of a snide remark from nintendo...

Anyway, Microsoft:

Quote:

Microsoft: January Xbox Live's Biggest Month Yet

Microsoft's Xbox Live online service had a record month in January, the company announced, driven by strong interest in its Netflix partnership and exclusive downloadable game content.

Following today's industry financial results courtesy of NPD, Microsoft announced it has reached 17 million Xbox Live users, and also trumpeted its 33 percent year-over-year hardware sales growth as the company claims "holiday momentum carries into 2009."

More than a million users have taken advantage of the movie service that allows Netflix members to stream content via Xbox 360 consoles, and Microsoft says 16 movies have been watched on average per household since the feature launched in November.

The demo for upcoming RTS Halo Wars, from effectively-defunct Ensemble Studios, set a one-day Xbox Live demo download record and reached 2 million downloads in a week, the company states.

As usual, Microsoft's post-NPD release focused heavily on its system's games' high Metacritic average and on Xbox Live's success -- Live as a service gained more users than it had in any previous single month, which Microsoft pins on the Netflix deal as well as recent and upcoming DLC for games like Fable II, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Fallout 3.

The company also continued to boast about its high game attach rate among its user base, with an average of 8.1 games sold per console.

Apparantly, NetFlix is very important to Microsoft. It almost seems to be more about the videoservice then the games.

But...no Sony Spin this month?