December NPD: Wii dominates and predictions fail
- January 14, 2010 17:52 PM PST
The December NPD numbers are in, and we've got the top ten selling video games, as well as the hardware sales rankings. Find them out, as well as how close we were in predicting them!
Lots of people were expecting a big month from Nintendo, with the analysts at Wedbush and the news team here at GamePro expecting New Super Mario Bros. Wii to take the top spot and the company's consoles to outsell the competition. Turns out Nintendo did even better than we expected. In short, they dominated the sales charts for December, taking the top three sales slots on the software charts, while selling over seven million Wii and DS systems combined--a figure that roughly doubles the combined sales of every other competing console. Check out the numbers below, with comparisons to our predictions earlier in the week.
December hardware NPD numbers:
1: Nintendo Wii--3,810,000 (GP's Prediction: 2,900,000 units, 1st place--910,000 difference)
2: Nintendo DS--3,310,000 (GP's Prediction: 2,600,000 units, 2nd place--710,000 difference)
3: Sony PlayStation 3--1,360,000 (GP's Prediction: 1,450,000 units, 4th place--9,000 difference)
4: Microsoft Xbox 360--1,310,000 (GP's Prediction: 1,500,000 units, 3rd place--19,000 difference)
5: Sony PSP--654,700 (GP's Prediction: 600,000 units, 5th place--54,000 difference)
6: Sony PlayStation 2--333,200 (GP's Prediction: 300,000 units, 6th place--33,200 difference)
HOW'D WE DO?
On the hardware side, as we said before, Nintendo destroyed the competition in terms of console sales. The other console manufacturers didn't have a terrible month on their own merits, as most of them posted numbers that dwarfed their November figures. The PSP in particular, rebounded pretty well, as the portable went from near-PS2 numbers in November, to nearly doubling the system's sales this month.
Besides the fact that we completely underestimated Nintendo's hardware dominance, we were pretty close regarding our predictions for the other systems. In particular, we were only 9,000 units off with our PS3 prediction.
TOTAL DIFFERENCE: 1,735,000 units
With millions of Wiis finding homes this December, plenty of the system's top selling software titles made appearances on this months charts. Not only did New Super Mario Bros. Wii take the month's top spot from the Modern Warfare 2 juggernaut, but the company's two 2009 series refreshers--Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort--snuck in and took the second and third place slots, leaving Modern Warfare 2's PS3 and Xbox 360 versions to round out the top five. Wii Play and Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story both made their return to the charts this month, to provided much-needed extra Wii Remotes and Mario-style gameplay for new Wii and DS owners. With the company taking six of the 10 slots, the only disappointment for Nintendo in December could be the absence of the new DS release, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. Besides Modern Warfare 2, the Xbox 360 versions of Left 4 Dead 2 and Assassin's Creed II were the only other non-Nintendo published games to chart this month.
December software NPD numbers:
1: New Super Mario Bros. Wii--Wii--2,820,000 (GP's Prediction: 2,500,000 units, 1st place--320,000 difference)
2: Wii Fit Plus--Wii--2,410,000 (GP's Prediction: 645,000 units, 7th place--1,765,000 difference)
3: Wii Sports Resort--Wii--1,790,000 (GP's Prediction: 1,400,000 units, 3rd place--390,000 difference)
4: Modern Warfare 2--Xbox 360--1,630,000 (GP's Prediction: 1,600,000 units, 2nd place--30,000 difference)
5: Modern Warfare 2--PS3--1,120,000 (GP's Prediction: 710,000 units, 5th place--410,000 difference)
6: Wii Play--Wii--1,010,000 (GP's Prediction: Would not place--1,010,000 difference)
7: Mario Kart Wii--Wii--936,100 (GP's Prediction: 310,000 units, 10th place--626,000 difference)
8: Assassin's Creed 2--Xbox 360--783,100 (GP's Prediction: 650,000 units, 6th place--133,000 difference)
9: Left 4 Dead 2--Xbox 360--728,500 (GP's Prediction: 590,000 units, 8th place--138,500 difference)
10: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story--Xbox 360--656,700 (GP's Prediction: Would not place--656,700 difference)
HOW'D WE DO?
Considering our software predictions, we managed to come somewhat close to guessing New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Left 4 Dead 2, Assassin's Creed II, and the Xbox 360's Modern Warfare 2's sales figures, but pretty much whiffed on the rest. Wii Play and Mario & Luigi didn't even land on our radar, and our rankings rarely jibed with the final results. If you think the total below is bad, we haven't even taken into consideration the two games we ranked that didn't make the list--Assassin's Creed II and Spirit Tracks. We're holding out hope that they ended up ranked 11th and 12th, respectively.
TOTAL DIFFERENCE: 5,479,200 units
So, for our first go round in the world of NPD predictions, we ended up wrong by over seven million units. We've learned some lessons and are better prepared for the next round of predictions, comforted by the fact that the lower sales numbers for January will all but guarantee that we'll have closer guesses.
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I guess in this day and age, no one proof read the article before it's posted. Or the calculator in Gamepro office is really broken.
As someone pointed out in the comment section, "1.45 million-1.36 million=90,000!!!!! Maybe thats why ya'lls predictions were so far off!!!!!"
EDIT: The title should have said "9000 units off for PS3". o well I don't proof read either! 
EDIT 2: Thanks for a bad clown points out that Mario & Luigi is on 360!
MikeB predicts that the PS3 will sell about 140 million units by the end of 2016 and triple the amount of 360s in the long run.
