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PS3 catching up with Xbox 360 shipments worldwide
Sony reported 3.7 million PS3 unit sales worldwide for Q2 of fiscal year 2011 (which ended September 30), bringing its life-to-date total to 55.5 million units and improving on its year over year Q2 sales by around 200,000. Just last month, Microsoft touted 57.6 million shipped units of the Xbox 360 worldwide, bringing Sony within sight of the vaunted number two position behind Wii (Nintendo reported 89.36 million units shipped as of October). While Sony's document says "sales," it's difficult to tell whether that refers to sales to consumers ("sell-through") or shipments to retail ("sell-in"). Both competitors' numbers refer to shipments.
Nintendo: DS is now best-selling console ever in US
Nintendo has tabulated its internal US sales figures for 2010, finding that more than seven million Wiis were sold here for the third year in a row. According to Nintendo, that means the Wii has now sold 34 million units life-to-date in the US. Yo Wii, I'm really happy for you, and I'm a let you finish, but the DS is the US's best-selling video game console of all time. Of all time. Nintendo reports that the life-to-date US sales for the DS family of systems now stands at over 47 million. The closest competitor is the PlayStation 2, which had sold 50 million in all of North America as of early 2009. The DS became Europe's best-selling console ever last year.
30 million Wiis sold in the US
If you went out this week to pick up a Wii, congratulations! You're part of history. Nintendo just announced that the Wii has now exceeded 30 million units sold in the US, forty-five months after its launch. To celebrate the occasion, Nintendo released some rare sales data, disclosing not only the top ten Nintendo-published Wii games (as of the end of June), but the top ten third-party games as well. Nothing from 2010 is on the list, reaffirming the belief that many Nintendo titles enjoy high sales alongside long tails. If that list isn't to your liking, however, perhaps you should go buy several copies of Sin & Punishment: Star Successor to move things along.
Xbox division posts $165 million profit in fiscal Q3 on strength of Xbox Live business
Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, the portion of the giant company responsible for Xbox operations (as well as Zune and Games for Windows) brought in $165 million in profits during the company's third quarter of fiscal 2010, which ended March 31. In the same period last year, the division lost $41 million. The soaring profits were a result of a record third-quarter revenue haul of $14.5 billion for Microsoft, with the E&D division accounting for $1.67 billion of that total. CFO Peter Klein cited Xbox Live as one of the factors responsible for the company's growth. In fact, Xbox Live, and the reduced cost of Xbox 360 manufacturing, helped the E&D division profit despite console shipments falling year-over-year, from 1.7 million shipments in Q3 of fiscal 2009 to 1.5 million in 2010. Tacking on to the last reported figures, Xbox 360 shipments have now surpassed 40 million units worldwide. With so many Xbox 360 units in the wild, Microsoft's Q3 Form 10-Q document [.docx] brings up a very good point: "Our hardware products such as the Xbox 360 console are highly complex and can have defects in design, manufacture, or associated software." You don't say.
Wii sales surpass NES; DS Nintendo's best-selling hardware ever
In addition to revealing its latest financial figures, Nintendo has released some interesting facts about its two star performers, the Wii and DS. As revealed in the financials, the Wii has sold over 67 million units since its launch in 2006. Putting that in context, Nintendo reveals that the original Nintendo Entertainment System sold 61.91 million units in its lifetime, which now makes the Wii the company's most successful console of all time. As for the DS, it has now sold 125.13 million units, surpassing Game Boy and Game Boy Color lifetime sales of 118.69 million units. That makes the DS Nintendo's most successful piece of hardware ever. It's important to point out that Nintendo counts all four iterations of the DS in its life-to-date sales numbers. Considering each version has a number of improvements over previous versions, we're sure there's plenty of overlap among consumers. Still, there's no denying that Nintendo's latest hardware lineup has been incredibly successful, even if it was slightly less successful in 2009. [Via Shacknews]
Life-to-date sales of the biggest Nintendo games
We know that Nintendo is doing very well financially as of the end of fiscal 2008. And, of course, we know that hardware sales play a major role in that windfall. But how is Nintendo doing in terms of software sales? Very well, thank you! The company released a list of every million-selling first-party title on the Wii and DS as a supplement (PDF link) to its financial report, with no real surprises other than, perhaps, the monolithic bigness of some of the numbers. The best-selling Wii title, of course, is Wii Sports, which sold 45.7 million copies across North American and European bundle sales and standalone Japanese sales.The best-selling DS game: Nintendogs, at 22.3 million copies! We're just happy to see the wonderful Rhythm Heaven on the list, though there is something odd about it: according to the data, Rhythm Heaven sold 140,000 copies outside of Japan -- but the game didn't even come out in the West until April 5, after the end of the fiscal year.The full list is after the break. Spoiler alert: if you are the type of person who gets angry about Nintendo's success in the expanded market, this will anger you.[Via Kotaku]
Nintendo consoles had 62 new million-selling titles in past fiscal year
A recent Nintendo financial statement/press release was chock full of goodies for those patient enough to dig through all the Bob-ombast. First was a mighty impressive sales figure -- over the past fiscal year, 62 games (first and third-party) which have been released on the Wii and DS reached one million copies sold life-to-date. This brings the total number of million-sellers on Nintendo's current batch of systems to 145. That's a large enough number, even when you don't multiply it by one million.Other interesting tidbits came in the release's solemn reflection over the past fiscal year, where Nintendo claims credit for the "Gaming Population Expansion." Also, the company lays out its plans for the future, explaining that it will continue "capitalizing on being the only hardware platform producer with powerful in-house software development teams." Oh, snap! Massive flame war imminent! Joystiq Thermo-Shield, engage!
