January NPD: PS3 and PS2 top 360, everyone down for the month

February 14th, 2008 | Category: Games

Filed under: Business

After the ridiculous flurry of green arrows we saw in our December NPD numbers post, it’s a little disheartening to see all these red arrows. certain, every month can’t have a Consumermas in it (we know, we’ve asked) so consider that when comparing that month’s console sales to the same period last year. Though NPD’s sales of $1.18 billion for January are actually down 6% from last year, when considered on a weekly basis (as our pals at GameDaily BIZ wisely point out, NPD tracked five weeks in January of ‘07, and only four for January ‘08) sales were actually up 18%. See, not so depressing.

Breaking down those console sales, most notable is the Xbox 360’s nosedive thanks in no small part to those retail shortages they preemptively helpfully pointed out that dawn. Meanwhile the PlayStation 3 seems to have really benefitted from the Blu-ray format’s massive

coup - and the CES press-storm that surrounded it - in early January. (Okay, and we imagine being on store shelves doesn’t hurt.) The other figures are rather self-explanatory, though we’d like to without out the elderly PS2 for a gentle pat on the back. Now, really, these red arrows are killing us … moving on to software sales after the break.

- Wii: 274K 1.08m (80%)
- PS3: 269K 528K (66%)
- PS2: 264K 836K (76%)
- DS Lite: 251K 2.22m (90%)
- PSP: 230K 830K (78%)
- Xbox 360: 230K 1.03m (82%)