Well very good numbers for MS and Nintendo. Nintendo continues to show that even though it is always on the "down turn" that come holiday season this is what consumers still want. I also will say that buying a system that already comes with two games looks very good during the holiday season. That probably had a lot to do with it. Also DS continues to be a strong competitor with compelling games and a solid price. MS of course shows resilience along with a large impact in the American market. So large that they have easily been able to push Kinect on to new and old 360 owners. MS took a huge risk with Kinect, maybe on similar levels to Nintendo with the Wii, and it does seem the risk has paid off. Obviously we'll look for future months to come to see how it goes on, but I think MS's risk is going to pay off for them.
I guess that leaves us with PS3 and the question of "what happened?" I mean I think the first thing that comes to people's mind is strong competition. They were facing two other home systems that were cheaper by a solid $100 and came with added value that PS3 didn't have in November in Black Friday. Already mentioned on the Wii front that for $200 you got the system and 2 games. Also some good BF deals that game extra game to that mix or in Best Buy's case, $30 off. Not to mention Wii had compelling software release consistently in the month with Goldeneye, Sonic, and Donkey Kong. 360 on the other hand also started out at $200, or $300 if you wanted Kinect with a game. Their holiday bundle also came with 2 games, although one downloadable. And then of course Kinect coming out in that month gave it its own uniqueness along with titles such as Fable, Halo, and Black Ops. When you really compare this to PS3, you can see where it didn't stack up competitively. It's Black Friday deals weren't as strong as 360 or Wii. You start off at $300 with no games and $400 to start off with Move and a game. And probably one of the biggest hits to its sales this month came from GT5 not coming out at the planned time. That was its big exclusive to really give it an edge and it missed the mark.
I would also say a second thing of Move just not competing well with Wii or Kinect. And that has become a large focus for consumers these holidays. So I would say some of this is from extremely strong competition from Nintendo and MS, but it really does seem it has been Sony's inability to meet that competition. Which is extremely surprising, as they did it so well last year after having quite the rebound in America. Let's see how December turns out though, as GT5 will be there and some more effective advertising may be able to give it some large increases for a good December. Then Sony will look to rebound with their 2011 lineup.
But all and all, software is what seems to be pretty epic too. I mean seriously 8.4 million for Black Ops. That is just crazy. I can't wait to see some leaked individual numbers haha.
