Quarter 3, 2012 Sales Update (VGC Exclusive Special)

[Michael-5]

Best Selling Video Game Consoles

Note: Release Dates are for North America, the bolded values beside some consoles represent the number of units sold since the last update.

1 – 156.18 million - Sony Playstation 2 (October 26th, 2000) (Plus 0.78 million)
2 – 152.17 million - Nintendo DS (November 21st, 2004) (Plus 0.49 million)
3 – 118.69 million - Nintendo Gameboy and Gameboy Color (GB-August 1989, GBC-November 1998)
4 – 104.25 million - Sony Playstation (September 9th, 1995)
5 – 96.71 million - Nintendo Wii (November 19th, 2006) (Plus 0.71 million)
6 – 81.51 million - Nintendo Gameboy Advance (June 11th, 2001)
7 – 75.13 million - Sony Playstation Portable (March 24th, 2005) (Plus 0.48 million)
8 – 68.76 million - Microsoft X-Box 360 (November 22nd, 2005) (Plus 1.52 million)
9 – 67.00 million - Sony Playstation 3 (November 11th 2006) (Plus 1.93 million)10 – 61.91 million - Nintendo Entertainment System (US-October 18th, 1985, Can-February 1986)
11 – 49.10 million - Super Nintendo Entertainment System (August 13th 1991)
12 – 32.93 million - Nintendo 64 (September 29th, 1996)
13 – 30.00 million - Atari 2600 (October, 1977)
14 – 28.54 million - Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (August 14th, 1989)
15 – 24.65 million - Microsoft X-Box (November 15th, 2001)16 – 21.74 million - Nintendo Gamecube (November 18th, 2001)
17 – 20.91 million – Nintendo 3DS (March 27th, 2011) (Plus 2.90 million)
18 – 13.00 million - Sega Master System (October 1986)
19 – 10.62 million - Sega GameGear (1991)
20 – 10.00 million - Nippon Electric Company TurboGrafx-16 (August 29th, 1989)
21 – 8.82 million - Sega Saturn (May 11th 1995)
22 – 8.20 million - Sega Dreamcast (September 9th, 1999)
23 – 6.00 million - Coleco ColecoVision (August 1982)
24 – 6.00 million - Sega CD (October 15th 1992)
25 – 3.00 million - Mattel Intellivision (1980)25 – 3.00 million - Nokia N-Gage (October 7th, 2003)
25 – 3.00 million – Playstation Vita (February 15th, 2012) (Plus 0.61 million)
28 – 2.00 million - Panasonic 3DO Interactive Multiplayer (September 1993)
28 – 2.00 million - SNK Neo-Geo Pocket, and Neo-Geo Pocket Colour (1998)30 – 1.50 million - Nippon Electric Company TurboExpress (1990)
31 - 1.12 million – Namco Bandai WonderSwan (1999)
32 – 1.00 million - Sega Nomad (October 1995)
33 - 0.77 million - Nintendo Virtual Boy (August 14th 1995)
34 - 0.57 million - Phillips CDi (1991)
35 - 0.50 million - Atari Lynx (September 1989)
36 - 0.30 million - Tiger Electronics Game.com (September 1997)
37 - 0.25 million - Atari Jaguar (November 18th 1993)
38 - 0.20 million - Sega 32X (November 1994)
39 - 0.042 million - Apple Pippin (1995)
40 - 0.025 million - Tiger Telematics Gizmondo (March 19th 1995)
41 - 0.015 million - Nintendo 64 Disk Drive (December 1st 1999- Japan Only)

Note: DS sales have been adjusted down between October 6th-October 13th by 480,000 units (Included in this data).

Current Generation Regional Console Sales

USA

1 – 51.28 million - Nintendo DS (Plus 0.33 million)
2 – 49.03 million – Sony PS2 (Plus 0.10 million)- 6th Gen
3 – 39.65 million - Nintendo Wii (Plus 0.24 million)
4 – 35.42 million - Xbox 360 (Plus 0.80 million)
5 – 22.04 million - Sony PS3 (Plus 0.54 million)
6 – 19.57 million - Sony PSP (Plus 0.03 million)
7 – 5.84 million – Nintendo 3DS (Plus 0.63 million) - 8th Gen
8 – 0.80 million – Sony PSV – (Plus 0.15 million) - 8th Gen

Europe

1 – 53.91 million – Sony PS2 (Plus 0.20 million) - 6th Gen
2 – 51.54 million - Nintendo DS (Plus 0.12 million)
3 – 31.92 million - Nintendo Wii (Plus 0.23 million)
4 – 26.18 million - Sony PS3 (Plus 0.85 million)
5 – 21.55 million - Sony PSP (Plus 0.11 million)
6 – 21.76 million - Xbox 360 (Plus 0.60 million)
7 – 5.57 million – Nintendo 3DS (Plus 0.86 million) - 8th Gen
8 – 0.94 million – Sony PSV – (Plus 0.21 million) - 8th Gen

Japan

1 – 32.97 million - Nintendo DS (Plus 0.02 million)
2 – 21.82 million – Sony PS2 (Plus 0.02 million) - 6th Gen
3 – 19.22 million - Sony PSP (Plus 0.18 million)
4 – 12.61 million - Nintendo Wii (Plus 0.15 million)
5 – 8.52 million - Sony PS3 (Plus 0.23 million)
6 – 7.63 million – Nintendo 3DS (Plus 1.19 million) - 8th Gen
7 - 1.61 million - Xbox 360 (Plus 0.01 million)
8 – 0.98 million – Sony PSV (Plus 0.22 million) - 8th Gen

VGC has PS2 sales at 153.68 million as of 2011 end, with 2.25 million units sold in that year. Sony claims 154.5 million units shipped by this point, with 4.7 million shipped in that year. So this puts approximately 720k units on shelves. Since FYQ3 2011, Sony has been shipping less then 50% of PS2 systems from the prior year, so far all simple estimation purposes, I will assume for Quarters not given that PS2 shipments are 60% of what they were in 2011 (So I'm being optimistic). Also I'm going to assume Sony sells everything they ship except for 1/3^rd the previous years shipment. (which would put PS2 at 700k units sold less then shipped as VGC had it).

Sony claims 0.6 million units shipped in Q1 of this year (Q4FY 2011). 60% of Q1/Q2 FY 2011 sales (April 1st-Sept 31^st) give PS2 0.7 and 0.6 million units shipped respectively, and assuming everything is sold except for 1/3^rd the last shipment. This would put PS2 at 0.6 million shipped for Q1, 0.84 million shipped for Q2, 0.72 million shipped for Q3, and 0.54 million shipped for the future Q4.

What this gives:     This would give Sony 0.94 million units sold for Q1, 0.78 million units for Q2, 0.78 million units for Q3 and 0.54 million for the future Q4. This leaves a gap between units shipped and sold of 0.38 million for Q3 and 0.20 million for Q4. This puts PS2 sales at 2.50 million for this Q3 report, and it will end at 2.88 million sold.

So 2.5 million sold for 2.16 million shipped, yes it is selling more then it shipped, but it's shipping significantly less then it used to and....well PS2 should phase out soon. I have no clue when it will, maybe in 2 years, but wow, 12 years and it's still selling nearly as much as phasing out current gen systems.

Now this means that PS2 will be selling 0.58 million better then in 2011 if we use VGC's PS2 sales data (selling 2.25 million in 2011), but when you look at how much PS2 has been shipping in the last 3 years, if we trusted VGC data, PS2 sales should be 5 million behind the shipped value, but even VGC's own PS2 total isn't that far off. Clearly VGC can't track PS2, and that's why they stopped sharing PS2 data (although they still give PS2 software sales in Japan).

For regional sales, I am going to assume 60% of PS2 sales are in the Middle East, South America, Africa, Canada, etc. I'm going to assume 25% of PS2 sales are from Europe, and 12.5% are from the US. About 2.5% are attributed by Japan (Media Create). So if this quarter PS2 sold 0.78 million, this means that 0.195 million sales are gained in Europe, and 0.0975 sales are gained in USA. I estimate that PS2 sales in USA are 48.72 at end of 2011 (53.65 million sales in North America x (10/11) since Mexico sales are minor, and Canada is 1/10^th the US population)

PS2 hardware sales data in Japan is obtained using Media Create information, while software sales data is supplied by VGC.

P.S. 0.78 million sales for Q3 is quite high for PS2. It's more then the DS, Wii, PSP and PSV for the quarter, and 2.5 million is more then the DS and PSP for the year. However this is not unusual, and it doesn't mean PS2 will outsell any of those systems during the year. PS2 does not get a large boost in sales in Q4 like most consoles, and it's sales are fairly evenly spread during the year. Still impressive though. - Thank ethomaz for pointing this out to me, and helping me with my PS2 algorithm. If you guys disagree with my estimations, please feel free to comment, I put a lot of time into this, and I want to get it right.