In 2010, software sales (as tracked by VGC) grew for Wii, PS3, X360, and PSP. DS was down. Nonetheless, on the current consoles, most of the increases went to publishers already big on a given platform. The pie got larger, but the big kids simply took more of, increasing their proportion of it in most cases. We can see this by looking at the number of publishers to top various thresholds by year.

At 1m:

PS3 sw increased by 35m in 2010 by our tracking...but only one additional publisher sold > 1m games compared to 2009. DS, PSP, X360, and Wii all shrank in terms of publishers to top 1m - and only DS had a sw decrease...

Amongst publishers to already have a bare (1m / year) presence on a platform, 2010 was a pretty good year. PSP, Wii, and PS3 all had record numbers of publishers top 2m units (even though fewer PSP, Wii publishers topped 1m, those that did were more likely to do very well). 2m-level publishing didn't fall off much for X360 and DS either.

All systems but Wii had a record (or matched the previous record) for number of publishers to top 3m in 2010.

At the publishers >5m level, Wii and PS3 set records, with X360 and PSP matching previous records. DS declined somewhat sharply at this level, which is what you'd expect - its sw market is now shrinking rapidly due to the avg player buying less than one game per year (hence top hits are fewer and selling less). 5m is where the $$ gets serious - for the consoles its over $100m, for portables, its over $80m.

No publisher on PSP has ever topped 10m, so its not included. Wii set a record again here, as Ubisoft, Nintendo, Activision and EA each topped 10m units in 2010. On DS, only Nintendo topped 10m. For X360, Microsoft, EA, Activision, Take Two, and Ubisoft topped 10m - matching the number of companies to do so on X360 in 2008. For PS3, Sony, EA and Activision each topped 10m. If 5m is serious $$, 10m is what pays for rainy days - this is over $200m for the consoles.

2010 was an excellent year for mega hits - and so Ubisoft / Nintendo (Wii), Sony / EA / Act (PS3), and Microsoft / EA / Act (X360) were each able to top 15m units (Nintendo did on DS too). For HD systems this is over $450m for the four companies (Microsoft, Sony, EA, Activision), and for Wii its over $300m.

The 20m club grew substantially in 2010. On Wii and DS only Nintendo achieved the feat (although Ubisoft just missed on Wii). For PS3, Sony and EA each topped 20m in a year for the first time. On X360, Microsoft joined Activision and EA in topping 20m for 2010 thanks to Kinect games. That said, the growth in the 20m club appears to have limited the growth in the number of publishers capable of topping 1m on the HD systems. With 70m more HD games sold in 2010 than in 2009, the number of publishers over 1m for the systems (combined) was exactly the same as in 2009!

Great analysis; Cheers!