Jacob Mazel

After a pretty big week for new software last week, Civilization Revolution was the top new debut for the week, at a respectable 117,000+ on Xbox 360, PS3 & DS. Total hardware sales are up slightly from last week, led in raw units by Wii & DS and week over week increases by PS3 and PSP. The major milestone for the week belongs to the Wii though. At 12,830,822 units lifetime in the Americas through the week ending July 12, 2008 Wii has topped Gamecube Americas sales. Gamecube finished up its sales life earlier in 2008 at roughly 12.73 million. At 306,000 units of hardware sold for Wii & DS vs. 218,000 units sold for all other platforms Nintendo’s momentum continues to build largely interrupted despite occasional Xbox 360 (Halo 3, price cut) and PS3 spikes (Metal Gear Solid 4, price cut). Next week the mid-model Xbox 360 will be priced at $299, so there should be another short term spike. But with a quick phase out, it doesn’t look like Microsoft plans on using the ‘price cut’ as a momentum changer. Until the next wave of price cuts and/or compelling software arrives to shake demand up a bit, the sales hierarchy should continue as is.

At this time last year, the 60-gig PS3 was marked down to $499, and as a result year over year comparisons for PS3 now become much more difficult for Sony. Last week, PS3 was up over 150% over the same week in 2007. This week, PS3 is up only 25% over the previous year. Similar growth can be found for DS, Wii and Xbox 360 though the former two have been able to achieve growth without price cuts. PSP is up as well though only about 15% from this week last year. PS2, which is now competing with rapid current generation uptake, is down nearly 50% year over year. The stat to look out for next week will be Xbox 360 year over year in the wake of the $299 20-gig Xbox 360 clearance price cut.

7-12-2008 Top Current Generation Software

Notes:

-         Guitar Hero Aerosmith is at nearly 600,000 units already on Xbox 360, Wii, PS3 and PS2. For a game that will have great legs, that’s an excellent start.

-         Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon (Wii) had a pretty disappointing debut. It will take excellent word of mouth for it to reach 100,000 units.

-         Metal Gear Solid 4 will become the next million selling PS3 title next week or the week after.

-         Unreal Tournament III (Xbox 360) should eventually top 200,000 in the Americas.

-         Wii should pass PSP lifetime sales in the Americas within four weeks.

-         DS has 16 of the top 50 titles this week. Wii has 13. The Americas is starting to look a lot like Japan did in 2006 and 2007. The major difference: Xbox 360 has 12 of the top 50 while PSP is almost completely unrepresented.

-         Grand Theft Auto IV has sold to 32.8% of all Xbox 360 and PS3 owners in the Americas.

-         Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games will easily clear 2 million units in the Americas by the time it stops selling. It should get a pretty big boost soon with the Olympics hype starting to ramp up.

-         Third party games in the top ten lists: Wii – 5, Xbox 360 – 9, PS3 – 9. Guitar Hero Aerosmith and Lego Indiana Jones were once again the only games common to all three platforms. Six of the top ten Xbox 360 and PS3 games are the same this week.

-         PS3 has a user base 11% the size of the PS2 right now in the Americas. PS3 has been about 20 months compared to 92 months for PS2 in the Americas. Time is starting to run out for PS3 to make a run to escape 3^rd in the Americas.

-         Crawling to a million: Army of Two (Xbox 360), MySims (DS), Metroid Prime 3 (Wii), Madden NFL 08 (PS3)

-         Charting Million Sellers in the top 200: Wii – 13, Xbox 360 – 15, PS3 – 6.

-         To date, 30,126,971 Wiis, Xbox 360s and PS3s have been sold in the Americas. Amongst those machines, Wii has 42.6% market share, Xbox 360 has 39.4% market share, and PS3 has 18.0% market share.

Contact Vgchartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com