Jacob Mazel

Black Friday sales for the videogame industry were excellent. Nintendo sold 1.8m systems for the week ending November 29 while machines from rivals Microsoft and Sony combined to sell about 1.1m units. Software sales were quite strong as well, but the vast majority of the spike this week is simply from the fact that Americans spent $10 billion ($30/per American if every American shopped) on Black Friday according to various reports, and a lot of that went to videogames. Last year, Black Friday week sales were strong as well, but Wii, DS, and Xbox 360 saw significantly better sales this year. PS3 had the weakest Black Friday to Black Friday growth, at 13%, and PS2 declined. Sony’s machines accounted for about 1 out of 3 videogame machines sold (31%) during Black Friday week in 2007, this year that ratio is down to about 2 out of 9 (22%) as the shares for Microsoft and Nintendo increase. Since Black Friday was at a different point in 2008 than in 2007, two comparisons are included below for the year over year trend. First though, a look at the size of the increases from last week show that value wins out over the holidays, as PS2 and DS had the biggest jumps despite being the oldest viable platforms on the market.

Although Wii had a smaller percentage increase, it increased almost as much as DS did in raw units sold (470,000 vs. 610,000). Five Xbox 360s sold for every two that sold last week, an impressive increase. PSP had a percentage increase almost as great as PS2, and DS in percentage, but it was only about a 170,000 unit increase. PS2 and PS3 each saw increases of almost 110,000 units from the previous week.

Year over year sales are similar to the chart above since a Black Friday week is being compared to a non-Black Friday week.

Comparing the Black Friday weeks reveals some interesting info though:

Wii had the strongest growth in this comparison, with DS close behind in units. By percentage, Xbox 360 was in second but the increase was only about 140,000 compared to a 215,000 increase for DS. PS2 was down sharply this Black Friday, and it may not be a major player next year as store space for gaming is getting quite cramped with five other successful platforms with tons of compelling platform, as well as the bulky music games.

11-29-2008 Top Current Generation Software

Notes:

-    A total of 49 games sold over 50,000 units this week in the Americas. Not bad for a recession huh?

-    Within the top fifty, there were three PS3 games, 14 Wii games, 18 DS games, 1 PS2 game, 1 PSP game, and 13 Xbox 360 games. Bundles are included in the comparison this week since each platform had at least one game bundled at one store this week.

-    New Super Mario Brothers, in week 133 (meaning the game released in 2005) managed to sell over 230,000 units this week. Not bad.

-   The latest Call of Duty has sold over 2.3m units across Xbox 360 and PS3.

-   Mario & Sonic (Wii) topped 2m units this week. Sequel for 2010?

-    Little Big Planet topped 500,000 units in the Americas this week and should eventually hit 1m. Uncharted had a fairly similar debut last year at this time, and is only a few weeks from 1m so the precedent is there.

-     The industry generated billions and billions of dollars this week. 18m+ units of software sold. 2.8m units of hardware. The software alone at that price point is $900 million.

-    Guitar Hero: World Tour stands at 1.62m across Wii, PS3, Xbox 360 and PS2. Rockband 2 is at 1.01m across Xbox 360 and PS3. EA seems to be missing a big opportunity by letting Activision dominate the lucrative music genre on Wii two Christmas seasons in a row.

-     31 games have now sold over 1m units in 2008 in the Americas. That figure will grow to at least 32 by the end of the year, and potentially to 40 or more depending on how attach rates hold up in December. Wii Fit of all things, is about to overtake Grand Theft Auto IV on Xbox 360 as the third game overall, and the third Wii game to sell 4m units in the Americas in 2008.

-     Chrono Trigger, like Animal Crossing and the Last Remnant before it, debuted higher in Japan than in the Americas. The DS base in the Americas is as big as the SNES base was and will end up much larger, so it should be interesting to see how the game performs compared to the original

-    Five publishers sold over 1m games this week.

-   Charting Million Sellers in the top 200: Wii – 12, Xbox 360 – 16, PS3 – 7.

-   To date, 38,243,291 Wiis, Xbox 360s, and PS3s have been sold in the Americas. Of those machines sold, 45.6% are Wiis, 36.9% are Xbox 360s, and 17.5% are PS3s.

Contact Vgchartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com