For all we hear about the public loving the Nintendo Wii and the console being the best-selling of this hardware generation (it’s still on top, by the way), EEDAR’s sales results for September indicate that the love affair might be calming down — and that Nintendo had good reason to announce its price drop.
EEDAR expects hardware unit sales for the current batch of home consoles to decrease by 4 percent year-over-year. In light of the economy this seems fine, until you consider EEDAR’s projection that all platforms except the Nintendo Wii and Sony PSP will post year-over-year gains. In other words, the declining sales of those two systems alone are so drastic that it overshadows all the positive news on the other fronts.
Nintendo Wii sales are expected to be down 45.41 percent year-over-year, from 687K units sold last year to 375K units this year. Compare this to the PlayStation 3 (PS3), which is expected to increase 72.41 percent year-over-year (400K units, up from 232K) and be the top-selling console for the month — the first time since the system’s launch in November 2006 that it’s led the way. The PSP, meanwhile, will see a sales decrease of 20 percent.
Software is a different story, with overall sales favorable at $715 million, or 16 percent higher than the same period in 2008. This was led, of course, by Halo 3: ODST, The Beatles: Rock Band, Guitar Hero 5 and Wii Sports Resort.
What happens in October and through the end of Q4 is still fuzzy, with all three consoles now having a price drop and consumers finally appearing to have regained some confidence in the market. However, with Nintendo Wii sales so slow in September, it begs the question: did Nintendo drop the price of its Wii to “keep up with the Joneses,” or did it do so to stop the bleeding of its downward trend?
