No one was expecting Nintendo to sell Wii and Nintendo DS hardware at the record-breaking rate it had in December, but January's take was no drop in the pond, with the Wii dominating sales charts.
Nintendo still managed to move over a million pieces of hardware to U.S. consumers in January, with 679,200 Wiis and 510,800 Nintendo DSs snapped up by gamers, according to the NPD Group. That's a big shift from the company's performance in January 2008, in which post holiday sales translated to just 274,000 Wiis and 251,000 DSs sold, less than half what the company sold last month.
The Xbox 360, which finished dead last a year ago, made it to third place relatively easy, with more than 300,000 consoles sold.
Sony's performance wasn't as rosy. With a PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 2 both still at the same price point last year, the console manufacturer saw a drop in sales, putting PlayStation hardware in the bottom half of the list. All totaled, however, Sony hardware moved close to half a million sold through.
- Wii - 679,200
- Nintendo DS - 510,800
- Xbox 360 - 309,000
- PlayStation 3 - 203,200
- PSP - 172,300
- PlayStation 2 - 101,200
Total hardware spend was $445.4 million, a 17% increase, according to the NPD Group.
"Even in these tough economic times, the fact that total sales were able to realize a 13 percent increase in revenue speaks to the continued strength of video games as one of the leading entertainment industries in the U.S.," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.