Nintendo Says Its Responsible For 99% Of Game Industry Growth In 2008

As has already been established, Nintendo is doing well for itself, shattering sales records in the United States with the Wii and Nintendo DS. And, according to Nintendo, it's 99% responsible for the industry's growth.

Nintendo highlighted that fact in its response to NPD sales data released yesterday, showing that Nintendo hardware sold more than 20 million units in the U.S. last year, with 132 million software units sold on the company's platforms. That's a considerable increase from the nearly 15 million consoles and portables it sold in 2007.

That increase in sales, Nintendo says, is 99% of the reason the video game industry saw revenues increase by $3.35 billion last year. That's a much smaller change than the game industry experienced from 2006 to 2007, we should note, 43% to 19% growth comparitively.

(The company included a handy — but visually ugly — pie chart to drive the point home, one that we tried to improve upon.)

With four of the best selling games in the U.S., according to the NPD Group, and the best-selling hardware by a large margin, we'd think it's pretty safe to say Nintendo is protecting the video game industry from succumbing to a terrible economy.

Will it be able to stave off an even worse 2009?

Nintendo flexes... kisses biceps. "Gamers" applaud!

This statistic looks misleading to me... There could actually be two companies "responsible for 99% of the industry growth" if they're calculating the way I think they are.

Company A, B and C. In 2007 they sell 200, 100, 100. In 2008 company A goes out of business and they sell 0, 400, 400 (industry growth was 400).

Woah, both company B and C are responsible for 75% of the industry growth!

so they are saying out of 100 people that did not own any console before that 99 of them bought a Wii while only 1 person bought a 360 or PS3.

Kind of hard to refute, considering everyone on here was already part of the console gaming community. Or is there someone here that never had a console and bought a 360 or Ps3 as their first one ever.

That's almost exactly what they're doing, and it's a gorgeous bit of spin.

Yeah no one ever bought a PS3 for the Blu-Ray or media functionality, or if they did, it was because they owned a PS2 as a DVD player 1st.  Especially early on in 2008, when the PS3 was not only the best, but also on par with the cheapest Blu-Ray players on the market for price.  Also, they don't count, because they would never dream of buying a game product on their PS3.

@Khuutra: Maybe someone should make a game about spinning numbers. You can either play on the PR team or on the vgchartz team, debunking the spin.

Its a pretty hard sell considering that all major consoles saw significant increases in their install base...

What is the point of this statement, actually? Raising potential stock prices for those so ignorant about the industry that they are vulnerable to this kind of crazy spin?

It's pretty much just so they can make the most bad-ass pie chart in human history.