Jacob Mazel

In the lead up to Black Friday, videogame sales continue ramp up in the Americas. Hardware sales increased to over 1m units this week, up 15% from last week. The total hardware sold is less than a year ago at this time, when Black Friday arrived earlier than in 2008. However, outside of that timing difference, the recession does not appear to be harming the industry. The real reason for the seasonal increases is of course the volume of top software released. Left 4 Dead, Animal Crossing, Need For Speed, as well as new entries in the Mortal Kombat and Tomb Raider series pushed all hardware sales up except for Wii, which is being withheld a bit for an enormous stock deployment on Black Friday.

Year over year sales are down across the board because of the aforementioned change in Black Friday timing. Hardware sales totaled 2m units during the comparable 2007 week, but are half that in 2008. Next week, based on previous weeks, should see a higher peak than Black Friday 2007 offsetting the year over year decrease this week. Wii in particular could sell perhaps as much as 700,000 units next week if supply is available, compared to about 450,000 last Black Friday.

11-22-2008 Top Current Generation Software

Notes:

-          All of the top 200 games sold at least 10,000 units this week since the software tie rates are staying roughly steady with the large hardware sales increases.

-          Shaun White Snowboarding topped 130,000 total sales across all platforms

-          Mortal Kombat topped 200,000 units total across Xbox 360 & PS3.  

-          Animal Crossing debuted stronger in Japan than in the Americas which is somewhat surprising for a Nintendo game

-          The Last Remnant also debuted higher in Japan, which is even more amazing given that the Xbox 360 base is almost 20:1 in favor of the Americas (14m) over Japan (800k).

-          Left for Dead debuted to sales of over 210,000 on Xbox 360, but it still barely made the top three against the Call of Duty: World at War (340k+) and Gears of War 2, (200k+) both of which are in their post-launch weeks now.

-          Need for Speed: Undercover debuted to sales of over 230,000 across the platforms it released on.

-          Sonic Unleashed had a more modest debut of about 75,000 units across Wii, PS2 and Xbox 360.

-          The new Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades for DS debuted to about 40,000 units compared to the 330,000+ debut for Guitar Hero: On Tour earlier in the year (also on DS).

-          Tomb Raider still appears to be Playstation-centric brand. Over half of the 107,000 units of the game were sold on PS3 week one instead of on Xbox 360, DS or Wii.

-          Non-Conventional Platformer Updates: De Blob is closing in on 200,000 units in the Americas and can be classified as a sleeper hit, Banjo has topped 100,000 units on Xbox 360 and appears heading toward that direction as well.

-          In 2008, thirty games have sold over 1m units in the Americas.

-          Charting Million Sellers in the top 200: Wii – 11, Xbox 360 – 11, PS3 – 5.

-          To date, 36,729,311 Wiis, Xbox 360s and PS3s have been sold in the Americas. Of those machines sold, 45.3% are Wiis, 37% are Xbox 360s, and 17.7% are PS3s.

Contact Vgchartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com