That's what I wanna know.  Wii Fit Plus goes from sub 190k to 430k - clearly the effect of a shortage, yet Pachter used it as a fresh stack of coal to power the doom train.

Is it me or Pachter is using VGChartz estimates? lol

Don't worry.

YEs 6% YOY GROWTH, the downward trend is broken!
________

March NPD analysis at Gamasutra.

Originally Posted by Gamasutra:
In contrast to last month, the video game industry saw year-over-year March growth in the U.S. retail console space, with revenues up 6 percent to $1.52 billion -- and PlayStation 3 had a rare month of software dominance.

According to tracking firm NPD Group, hardware sales were down 4 percent year over year to $440.5 million, as hardware prices declined 16 percent overall since last March. Software sales, however, grew 10 percent to $875.3 million and accessory sales were up 11 percent to $206.8 million.

Actually he was just about right on his Wii prediction.

DS – 625,000
Wii – 540,000
Xbox 360 – 450,000
PS3 – 430,000
PSP – 145,000
PS2 – 90,000

It's drives me nuts that we don't get Canadian NPD numbers. With Canada not facing the same PS3 supply issues that USA is it probably represents more than 10% of sales this month, especially with how huge GOW3 first shipment was.

                PlayStation 2 118.3K 
                PlayStation 3 313.9K 
                PSP 119.9K 
                Xbox 360 338.4K 
                Wii 557.5K 
                Nintendo DS 700.8K

Good comments in the Gamasutra article...

Leon Terry

15 Apr 2010 at 4:24 pm PST

Looks like Pachter was wrong about the death of Wii Fit. No surprise there since he always ignores what Nintendo says. Good software and hardware numbers all around with the exception of PSP. The Wii was not in full supply in March so I wonder if hardware numbers will be higher for April.

Ken Masters

15 Apr 2010 at 4:35 pm PST

Yup. That is exactly what I was trying to point out in Matt's 'Wii Software Decline' article, Leon. Listening to Pachter will only cause one to look foolish. (To Matt's credit, he did edit the article): http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27665/Analysis_Examining_Declining_Wii_Softwa re_Revenue_In_2010.php Wii Fit Plus, right back in the top 10. Going from under 190k to 430k is overwhelmingly strong evidence of a shortage.

Then its just confusing in general. I see no reason why VGChartz cannot give explicit U.S. numbers. I suspect the reason for the combination is that it gives a little more fudge factor for the numbers because they can always say the split between the U.S. and Canada/Mexico changes and it differs for different products.

Let's kick it old school, shall we fellas?

360 didn't really beat PS3, it was a statistical tie!

I pointed out above, Canada and South America are definitely more heavily weighted for PS3 this month. Probably not enough to account for the discrepancy entirely but they almost certainly represent more than 87% this month.