Top Selling Q1 2011 Games by Platform / Multiplatform & HW Trends
by Jacob Mazel, posted on 09 April 2011 / 6,461 Views
The first quarter of 2011, running the thirteen weeks ending April 2, 2011 has just ended. The following data for top software and hardware trends is meant as a brief overview of the quarter. Immediately below, you'll find the top twenty games on a multiplatform basis, as well as for Wii, PS3, X360, 3DS, DS, and PSP in January to March 2011 (Q1 2011). Following that is a brief look at hardware trends in Q1 2011 vs. Q1 2010.
Overall, it was a pretty good quarter for multiplatform software, with nine-million selling games in addition to three bundled games that also sold over 1m units for the quarter.
Correction: Wii FIt Plus lifetime total is 18.70m
This is likely the last quarter we'll see a multiplatform top 20 completely devoid of 3DS software. PES 2011 nearly made the top 20 multiplatform games, and Nintendogs + Cats and a few other titles will likely climb substantially starting next quarter. It was a bit surprising to see 11 exclusive titles on the multiplatform top twenty list, but with PS3, X360 (particularly Kinect), and Wii each supporting several exclusives, it does make sense.
On a single-platform basis, the bottom of the top 20 is much lower.
Correction: Wii FIt Plus lifetime total is 18.70m
Wii is fairly dominated by top brands now. There are four games with 'Mario', five dancing games, and then another 11 games. Compared to DS and 3DS though, the Wii top twenty is still quite high for both Nintendo & third parties.
The 3DS base is still far too small to support many profitable games. Only eight games have sold even 100,000 units on the device in its half a quarter on the market. For a launch period on a Nintendo system though, third parties have done remarkably well so far, taking eight of the top ten spots to date.
On the original DS, the huge base is largely becoming neutralized as purchasing rates continue to fall. Pokemon was the only title to top 1m units in the quarter even with the DS base at nearly 150m units now.
Moreover, even with roughly twice the user base of Wii, the bottom of the top 20 cut off at about half the level of the Wii top 20. These figures indicate the DS purchasing rate is about 1/4 of the Wii purchasing rate.
PSP is facing similar declines to DS, but had a lower level for peak software due to its smaller base.
The PSP top 20 is overwhelmingly dominated by Japanese made and Japanese oriented titles. EA sold 130,000 units of Fifa for the quarter (43,000 / month), and that was the biggest PSP game in the entire (roughly) 50m-strong non-Japanese market for PSP. In Japan of course, the 16m PSP base continues to support several big games - including five that topped 250,000 units for the quarter.
PS3 had three games top 1m units for the quarter, and a number of other titles achieved more modest, but still solid sales.
Killzone 3 and LittleBigPlanet 2 were Sony's big PS3 games for the quarter and each topped 1m units. Gran Turismo 5 also continued to perform well in its second quarter on the market. The bottom of the PS3 top 20 was higher than on Wii, but the top was also lower. Compared to X360, the top and bottom title sold a bit less on PS3 than on X360.
On Microsoft's system, Kinect Adventures outsold all non-bundled games, and Call of Duty: Black Ops was the only million-seller for the quarter.
Whereas Sports Champions was the only PS3 Move game to chart in Q1 2011 amongst top selling PS3 games, three titles for Kinect did reach the top games list for X360. Even so, the X360 top-ten in the quarter was dominated by traditional core-Xbox content - action games & shooters. As the Kinect base grows from 20% of all X360 users to 30% or more, rankings for top software on X360 should begin to change substantially. For now though, the core, non-Kinect base is still four times larger than the Kinect base limiting the number of Kinect games that can appear on a chart like the one above.
Hardware sales for the quarter were also interesting. Each market showed a decline in total hardware sales compared to 2010. The main reason is that outside of 3DS which did not exist in 2010, and X360 in EMEAA and the Americas, all hardware declined substantially from Q1 2010 to Q1 2011.
With 3DS, global hardware sales declined only 14% from Q1 2010 to Q1 2011. Excluding 3DS, the decline was 25% even with X360 up slightly on a global basis.
Nintendo and Sony will be definitely be under pressure to cut price in 2011 based on Q1. Even with 3DS, Nintendo sold 1.15m units less hardware during the March 2011 quarter than the March 2010 quarter. Sony sold 1.5m units less hardware during the March 2011 quarter than the March 2010 quarter. Microsoft sold 250,000 units more hardware though, so hardware only declined 2.4m units quarter over quarter.
In the Americas, X360 is up 18% in Q1 2011, and 3DS was largely able to offset the DS decline and so hardware sales dropped only 9%.
Wii has dropped off the most to date in the Americas. PS3, PSP, PS2 and DS are also down by 15% to 30% though. Price cuts and ongoing 3DS sales might be enough to turn the Americas positive in some quarters of 2011 as eating into the Wii and PS3 declines would erase at least 5% of the overall hardware drop for the year.
The sharpest hardware drops to date are in the EMEAA region, as X360 sales are closer to flat while older systems are declining more quickly than in Japan and the Americas.
In EMEAA, four of the six systems available in Q1 2010 fell 35% from that quarter to Q1 2011. PS3 also fell 12%, and X360 was up by 5%. Total hardware fell 22% - and thats with 3DS. Without 3DS, hardware dropped by 30%. Even with price cuts, these types of drops will probably prevent EMEAA hardware sales from matching 2010 levels. A PS3 price cut could easily push X360 negative year over year, and a Wii price cut would only get Wii to sales comparable to or just under 2010 levels.
In Japan, hardware sales declined an impressively bad 42% without 3DS compared to Q1 2010. However, with 3DS, the decline was only 11%.
Japanese hardware sales trends outside of 3DS were bad across the board this quarter. Wii fell off by an amazing 57%, and is clearly aging the fastest in Japan. Even without NSMB Wii lifting sales in early 2010, Wii probably still would be down 35-45% this year. DS also fell by 50%, but that is more tied to 3DS, and less worrisome as DS is two years older than Wii. Sony's PSP dropped a mere 16%, the least for pre-3DS hardware. PS3 and X360 fell 20% and 26% respectively, with neither Move, Kinect, or recent big titles doing anything to slow hardware drops. Despite ongoing growth in the West in 2010, PS3 & X360 sales actually fell in Japan by about 20% from 2009 to 2010, so the continuing drop in Q1 2011 suggests the HD systems may have already peaked in Japan. If price cuts and NGP do arrive in Japan during 2011 though, the year could easily end up being up from 2010 in Japan.
Contact VGChartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com
