Hardware and Software Shipment Update - Dec 2010 - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 07 February 2011 / 6,497 Views
Figures from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft for the last three months of 2010 and the entire year have arrived. For the final quarter of the year, Nintendo shipped 9.01m DS systems and 8.74m Wiis, bringing those bases to 144.56m and 84.64m units lifetime through December 2010. Sony shipped 6.3m PS3s, 3.6m PSPs, and 2.1m PS2s for the quarter, bringing the PS2 base to 149.7m lifetime, the PSP base to 67.8m lifetime, and the PS3 base to 47.93m lifetime . Microsoft shipped 6.3m X360s for the quarter, bringing the X360 base to 50.8m units lifetime. Lifetime to date software figures are 695m games for Wii, 817m for DS, 408m for PS3, 287m for PSP, and 1527m for PS2. Microsoft doesn't provide software shipments for X360, but they're likely about 10-20% higher than PS3 through December, depending on whether Microsoft counts currently bundled software Kinect Adventures and past bundles like the Pure package.
For the entirety of 2010 (Jan-Dec), Nintendo shipped 19.46m DS systems and 17.19m Wii systems, while Microsoft shipped 12.10m X360s, and Sony shipped 14.4m PS3s, 7.7m PSPs, and 6.9m PS2s. Microsoft's figure for the year is its best since entering the video game industry in 2001. Nintendo and Sony have previously posted far better figures than those seen in 2010. Sony had shipped over 20m PS1s one year and over 20m PS2 systems in two years during their peaks, and Nintendo shipped over 20m Wiis per year for two years as well. PS3 figures for October 2009 to September 2010 were also 14.6m, higher than the 14.4m shipped from January 2010 to December 2010. On a quarterly shipped basis from launch, the consoles are trending more similarly with time, and the portables have quickly fallen since 2009.
PS3, Wii, DS and PSP shipments all dipped from the December 2009 quarter to the December 2010 quarter, but X360 had its strongest single-quarter figure ever during October-December 2010. Wii looks like it is now trending very similarly to PS3 and X360 in normal quarters, but between them and DS for the holiday quarters. DS has also finally started to weaken even in the December quarter, as shipments fell below 10m for the first time since 2006. PSP also had its fourth down Christmas quarter in a row.
Given software trends, the hardware declines for Wii and PS3 against the previous December quarter are not that worrying. However, DS, PSP and PS2 are each rapidly declining for software. PS3 and Wii in contrast, despite seeing hardware shipments fall in the crucial holiday quarter, are seeing nearly steady to growing software trends.
With a record December quarter, Wii remained nearly flat from 2008-2010 - changing less than 10% overall even though hardware shipments have dropped substantially from 2008 (24.8m) to 2010 (17.2m). PS3, with hardware near peak levels, saw software shipments grow in 2010 as well.
PS3 figures continue to track up with hardware as games purchased per user barely fell from 2009 to 2010 after falling quite sharply from 2008 to 2009. Next year should see PS3 purchasing rates fall to 1.9-2.7 games per user based on historical trends, from 3.1 in 2010. Microsoft doesn't provide shipment data for software.
Overall, hardware shipments fell to 36m in the December 2010 quarter, down from 41m in the December 2009 quarter. Software jumped to 209m games shipped in the Dec 2010 quarter from 204.5m in the previous December quarer across Nintendo & Sony systems combined. Without knowing Microsoft's shipment figure its difficult to say if software increased or fell from the previous holiday quarter.
Ten Largest Systems for HW Shipments and SW Shipments
With the data in for the December 2010 quarter, we can also see which systems have the largest figures for hardware and software totals over their lifetimes.
Currently, DS, Wii, PSP, and X360 are amongst the largest user bases ever. PS3 is 11th, but will join the top ten during the March 2011 quarter when it passes SNES.
PS2 shipments are 149.7m and Sony may yet ship another 10m PS2s before it stops selling. DS shipments are 144.6m, and Nintendo will ship another 25m-35m yet. Wii is at 84.6m and still steadily growing. It should pass PS1 sometime in mid-2012. PSP, at nearly 68m is in its final days, barely outshipping the much older PS2 during the past year, but it can probably still reach 80m even with declines in each fiscal year from this point onwards. X360 should top NES by the end of 2011, even if shipments were to drop in 2011 from 2010. The X360 is 9.5m units behind where PSP was in 21 quarters of availability, but it has been making inroads lately. By the end of 2011, quarter 25 for X360, figures will be within 6m units of where PSP was in its quarter 25. PS3, at 47.9m shipped through December 2010 is 2.9m units behind X360 on a shipment basis, the same distance behind as in the September 2010 quarter, but could still end up ahead of X360 - eventually - despite not even being amongst the top ten systems yet.
On the software side, PS3 is already the eighth largest system ever. X360 figures are estimated at between 450m and 500m as Microsoft doesn't provide figures for shipments. Wii at almost 700m is rapidly closing in on DS, which despite launching two years earlier has only just topped 800m units. DS should end up with a figure very similar to, but probably just above PS1 lifetime for software. Wii looks like it will end up between PS1 and PS2 for software as it is trending behind PS2 software due to Japan but ahead of PS1 software. Thus Wii software will likely end up around 1.2b - 1.3b units. X360 and PS3 should top GB and NES software figures lifetime rather easily but will probably fall below PS2, PS1, DS and Wii figures by large margins. PSP software remains in 11th place all time, nearly 100m units behind GBA still. Shipments for PSP software will top 300m units lifetime in mid-2011, but with 3DS and NGP coming, figures will likely top out at 350m give or take 5%, just below GBA.
As a point of reference, even just two years ago, Wii was the eighth largest system for software, X360 was 9th, and PS3 was not particularly close to the top ten (behind N64, GC, PSP, Genesis and others as well as the systems shown above). Software totals for Wii, PS3, and X360 have each doubled or more from the end ofDecember 2008 figures to December 2010.
Contact VGChartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com
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I think they are always being extra HARD on Playstation. The PS3 is said to have a 10 year life cycle. So it will sell more machines and much more games the next years.
As always ps3/wii software is undertracked or 360 software is overtracked. Or both
seriously people they admit this dont bitch about it or dont come to the site its getting repetitive.
estimation vs no real data...wellcome to vgchartz..
@Lostplanet22
I think retail games with downloaded version has counted... like GT5 Prologue... but all the other games on PSN didn't count.
And the software for Xbox 360 figure is just a estimation... no real data.
@nightsurge:
Option A: Their are more PS3's on shelves/warehouses..
Option B: Vgchartz has no idea how the PS3 sales are in smaller markets;...
Option C: PS3 is sold in more markets so it makes sense to have more PS3's in stock (and ship more)..
Nice article only I think PS3 and X360 have a chance to pass or get close to PS1 software sales... The X360 thx to Kinect software sales and the PS3 with all his exclusives could ship 120-150 sofware sales.... Sadly thought software sales don't include Xbox live/PSN sales right?
@nightsurge 360 didn't outsold the PS3 so much in last two quarters... just 200k and 500k in order... and in first two quarters of 2010 PS3 outsold 360 over 1.5m... so Sony had a vantage after all.
I really want to know how Sony keeps shipping more PS3's when the 360 has been outselling it pretty consistently over the last 2 quarters...
wtf,,xbox 360 good sordware sales.
Too bad it's an estimate.
Xbox 360 500M Games sold is amazing.
So is this good news or bad news?
