USA Retail Sales Preview - December 2009
by Brett Walton, posted on 13 January 2010 / 3,687 Views
With NPD set to release their monthly data for December on Thursday, we present a summary of VGChartz data for the same period for as a preview and for comparison.
Monthly highlights:
- Total revenue down 3% year on year
- 160 games sold over 100,000 units
- 9.4 million units of hardware was sold totalling $1.8b in revenue
- Over 83 million units of software were sold totalling $2.7b in revenue
- New Super Mario Bros Wii sold 2.4m units on Wii
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold 2.1m units across Xbox 360 and PS3
VGChartz top 30 software for December 2009 is shown below:
VGChartz hardware for December 2009 is shown below:
VGChartz estimates that over 3.0m Wiis sold in the United States in December 2009 - an all time record for a home console in the United States. It rivals the all time USA video game hardware record set by the DS last December (3.04m by NPD, 2.94m by VGC). Wii and PS3 were the only systems up for the month against December 2008, although the DS is producing more revenue than last year as well with sales flat and the DSi selling for $170.
Not surprisingly, twelve of the top thirty games for December 2009 were Wii games as attaching to even five of the one hundred Wiis sold in December meant a game sold over 150,000 units. Nintendo's New Super Mario Bros. Wii was the major title for the month - and it now stands less than a 1.5m behind Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in the United States on X360. It is already ahead of the PS3 version of the game.
The PS3 had a strong month for software, with games in the top thirty - in line with the size of the PS3 base relative to the Wii base in the United States. Sony's Uncharted 2 performed well, topping a million units. Nintendo's sold 2.5 DS systems for every PS3 sold in December, but only five DS games charted for the month. Zelda was the strongest performer.
Microsoft's X360 had six third party games top 500,000 for the month - quite an impressive amount. Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 continues to sell exceptionally well on the X360. As a result, Activision had the best month for publishers not named Nintendo in the United States.
Sony's PS2 and PSP did not see any titles crack the top thirty for the month.
VGChartz estimates that Nintendo sold 10.80m DS systems and 8.80m Wiis in the United States in 2009, while Sony sold 4.10m PS3s, 1.80m PS2s, and 2.45m PSPs. Microsoft sold 5.00m X360s in the United States. DS, PS3, and X360 were up against 2008 while Wii, PSP and PS2 declined.
Despite the decline in Wii hardware sales, 2009 remained an excellent year for Nintendo overall. Seven of the top ten games of 2009 were for Wii or DS and made by Nintendo as can be seen here.
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