Jacob Mazel

NPD will report USA videogame sale figures for the four weeks ending January 31, 2009 on February 12, 2009 at 6:30 PM EST. Vgchartz data for the Americas, covering the same period of time is already available. After a banner December to end 2008, Vgchartz data shows that 2009 is off to a strong start for the videogame industry. Nintendo’s third quarter financial results included a slide with Nintendo’s internal sales estimates. In that slide Wii sales through January 24 were up roughly 100% from 2008, and DS sales were up significantly as well. Vgchartz data shows similar trending, with Wii figures for January close to the amazing non-holiday level last seen in October 2008 when Wii sold 800,000 units according to NPD USA data. To estimate what NPD will report for January 2009 USA figures, multiply the Americas figures below by 0.9.

Note that in January 2008, NPD reported that 1.5m videogame machines were sold in the USA, with none of the six primary machines (Wii, DS, PS3, PS2, PSP, 360) seeing sales below 200,000 or above 300,000 units. For January 2009, we expect a radically different situation. We expect that NPD to report that Nintendo sold 1.3m Wii & DS machines, Sony sold 570,000 PS3, PS2, and PSP machines, and Microsoft sold 340,000 Xbox 360s. In terms of hardware sales, this would represent an impressive ~50% year over year growth in hardware sales on equal pricing for five of the six platforms. Sony’s share of this growth has shrunk though, with negative total platform sales in the move from January 2008 to January 2009 even as the market has grown overall. PS2, PSP, and PS3 combined to sell over 760,000 units in January 2008 in the USA according to NPD, but that figure should be ~200,000 units lower in January 2009.

Software sales for the start of 2009 look strong as well. Nintendo continues to lead the way. Five of the top ten titles for the month were published by Nintendo directly, and two third party games also charted for Nintendo’s systems. The remaining three spots were split between the Xbox 360 and PS3, with Call of Duty: World at War charting in the top ten for both systems, and Gears of War 2 charting for Xbox 360. As always, multiply the total in the Americas column by 0.9 to estimate what NPD will report for USA totals.

It is worth noting that quite a few games outside the top ten also sold over 100,000 units this month, showing that software sales are not becoming ‘top heavy’ due to the recession.

Contact Vgchartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com