Edit: Should have been 10 months!

I just think its interesting. I stumbled upon this on the internet so I returned to share with you my good friends on Vgchartz.

So as you can see, especially from the 12 month rolling average that the hump came February 09 and since then its been almost constant decline aside from the fantastic holiday season sales.

You can see this even clearer in this YOY % change graphic. Note the linear regression is the thinner blue line whilst the YOY % is the fatter blue line.

Now im not saying things are bad for Nintendo. Things are still good, they are still very good indeed. Even if the sales for February can be attributed wholey to supply issues that still doesn't explain away why they have been down YOY for 9 months out of last year.

Personally I think this has two very important implications for the console generation.

1. I think Nintendo are likely going to have to once again increase the value inside their console, so my suspicion is that they will bundle M+ and Wii Sports resort with every single Wii sold. This ought to be able to steady the sales and ensure a pretty stellar holiday season once again. They will not cut the price again as far as I can see from their comments with regards to training consumers not to expect price cuts. It seems to have worked for them so far, so I doubt they will stray and they will definately think about this with a cool head.

2. If a Me too product gets released on what is effectively a declining market. The Sony Move could essentially get taken down by the Wiis success and then fall. The success nets them a > 50% portion of the market and the easiest consumers to pursuade. Then entering into a declining market they would have to fight against an already established competitor with an already excellent reputation in this field for consumers who are much harder to convince and much slower to make up their minds.

Note: I said the market was declining, but only in the sense that of the currently interested consumers, a large proportion of the easiest to convince consumers has been taken. That means the takeup rate of the remainder has to fall as their numbers drop. If a new game or title is released which finds a new market then the Wii can obviously reverse these declines.

Their abysmal holiday titles (Animal Crossing & Wii Music) cut off their momentum after 2008, and 2009 didn't have a decent system pushing first party title until Wii Sports Resort (I think). So, their sales were 'low' all that year.

Dec. 2009 was a blockbuster month for them, and they are went through shortages for the first 3 months of this year. Now that stock is replenished, they will be better off this year. They might still be down YOY, but not by such wide margins.

That'll change with March. Jan and Feb 09 where very strong and even without shortages (or NPD corrections) it would be very hard to have beaten those months. March was the first month in 09 to be down YoY and while NSMB momentum pushes on and with stronger new releases in the period, Wii should easily have a few months of being up YoY again now.

Actually if March is up YoY it looks like my prediction for Q1 and Q2 2009 will be exactly right, which was Wii being flat or making moderate growth (it will be the positive side of flat) and bigger growth for Q2 (pretty much inevitable).

I like these charts by the way. I did the same one as the second chart with vgchartz numbers myself but it was less complete and less presentable, apart from the typos.

Well then, it'll be an interesting trend to watch.

I'm gonna take the second chart and use it in another thread if you don't mind. Did you create the charts?

I didn't so go ahead.

NPD = world

Going from: huge sales to: still huge sales = D00med