Holiday sales were dominated by the Nintendo DS handheld and the Nintendo Wii sold more units than the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 (PS3), but retailers say 2007 was unique in that all of the games systems on the market performed extremely well.
Market watcher GfK today announced total games industry sales hit $1.3 billion in 2007, an increase of 43.6 per cent over 2006.
GfK has released detailed holiday sales results for each individual console to the manufacturers, but refused to release them publicly, saying it was up to each manufacturer to decide how much data to release.
Microsoft and Nintendo have so far refused to release their sales figures for the final weeks of the year, but Sony said the PS3, PS2 and PSP figures were 48,000, 81,000 and 45,000 units, respectively.
However, GfK rankings obtained by this site show the Nintendo DS handheld dominated over the holiday period, followed by the Wii and the Playstation 2, which were neck-and-neck. The final three places were filled by the PS3, Xbox 360 and the Playstation Portable (PSP), but it is understood the trio were within a few thousands units of each other.
Commenting on sales in EBGames outlets around the country, CEO Steve Wilson said all systems performed extremely well but the Nintendo DS dominated by a large margin. He was also impressed with the Playstation 2, which attracted significant mainstream demand thanks to its low price and array of social games.
Of the three new console platforms, the Wii was also a standout but was held back by stock shortages, Wilson said.
"It's pretty unique when you can actually say there isn't a system that did badly - I mean, the PSP was bringing up the rear and you would even say the PSP had a good Christmas," said Wilson.
Australians bought 15.4 million games in 2007 but more than a third of those sales were made in the lead up to the holidays during the final quarter of the year, GfK said.
The best-selling game across all consoles was Halo 3 for the Xbox 360, which sold over 120,000 copies.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6184925.html
Ron Curry, the new CEO of local industry body the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia, attributed the strong sales growth to the release of next-generation consoles and the rising average age of the Aussie gamer to 28 years old.
“Last year, Australians welcomed the arrival of the PS3 and marked a full year since the release of the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. Sales figures also indicate a resurging popularity in handheld consoles with 2.3 million units of software for the Nintendo DS system purchased last year compared to the 840,000 purchased in 2006,” Curry said.
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23087085-15306,00.html
Figures released by Sony last week from market tracker GfK, showed 48,000 PS3s sold in the lead up to Christmas.
For the calendar year 2007, GfK said, 155,000 PS3s had been sold since it launched in March.
Microsoft, for its part, said the company's Xbox 360 console had by mid-January achieved an installed base of 340,000 in Australia and New Zealand since its 2006 release (according to GfK figures), and 303,000 in Australia alone.
Sony's Mr Ephraim, however, said the GfK figures for the PS3 did not include the results of a special offer over the holiday period whereby Sony gave away a free PS3 with every one of its Bravia flatpanel televisions sold.
This would mean an additional 20,000 PS3s in Australian homes, he said.
"GfK didn't count the Bravia freebie offer," Mr Ephraim said.
The company's veteran PlayStation 2 (PS2) console also continued to sell strongly over the holiday period, adding 81,000 units to its installed base of more than 2.1 million in October.
Nintendo Australia's popular consoles, the DS and the Wii, are reaching key milestones on the back of greater than expected sales during the Christmas period.
It confirmed that the handheld DS sold 988,168 by early January and that by the end of 2007 the Wii had clocked up sales of 293,990, according to figures from Gfk.
This means the Wii sold more than 120,000 units over the last quarter of last year.
However, spokeswoman Heather Murphy wouldn't provide up-to-the-minute figures because Nintendo is preparing to make an announcement on Thursday.
