June 2011 Shipment Update for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 29 July 2011 / 8,490 Views
Shipment figures for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have arrived. It was a very quiet quarter overall, with no hardware platform shipping even 2m units for the quarter. Wii, DS, PS3, and PS2 were each down year over year, with X360 and PSP up a touch. 3DS shipments also dropped substantially from its launch quarter.
Shipments April - June 2011 July 2010 - June 2011 Lifetime Through June 2011
Wii 1.56m 13.60m 87.57m
DS 1.44m 15.82m 147.86m
3DS 0.71m 4.32m 4.32m
PS3 1.80m 13.70m 51.83m
PSP 1.80m 8.60m 71.30m
PS2 1.40m 6.20m 152.3m
X360 1.70m 13.70m 55.30m
The figures above including some rounding, as Sony and Microsoft don't report totals at the 10,000 unit level. 3DS has obviously only been out for four months, but global figures for the past 12 months come to 75.94m units of hardware - down from 100.8m systems shipped in the March 2009 year, in addition to being down from the 95.3m systems shipped in the March 2008 year, and the 87.8m systems shipped in the March 2010 year. Figures for the past year are even down substantially from the 78.2m systems shipped in the March 2011 year. With 3DS, Wii, PS3, DS, and X360 each likely to perform pretty well over the Christmas quarter (Vita will have limited quantities for launch), the year to June 2011, or the year to September 2011 looks like the absolute nadir for video game hardware in the current cycle. The low point in the era of PS2 was about 52m systems shipped per year, so the current era low point is about 40% higher - while the high point growth was close to 80%.
Microsoft doesn't provide software shipments for X360, but Sony and Nintendo reported that the following volumes of games shipped for their platforms in the June 2011 quarter:
Shipments April - June 2011 July 2010 - June 2011 Lifetime Through June 2011
Wii 13.44m 156.53m 729.53m
DS 12.13m 110.69m 851.61m
3DS 4.53m 13.96m 13.96m
PS3 26.1m 149.20m 464.5m
PSP 6.6m 44.0m 304.2m
PS2 1.5m 14.50m 1503.7m
For the quarter, 64.3m games shipped on Nintendo and Sony platforms, with perhaps 90m-100m games shipped in total if Microsoft had given out a X360 figure. In the past year, 488.88m games have shipped for Sony and Nintendo platforms, down from a high of 640m in the March 2009 year, as well as the 540m games shipped in the March 2010 year, and the 513m games shipped in the March 2011 year. With Microsoft included, the all time peak was likely 750m games shipped in the March 2009 year, a figure which has since declined to around 600-630m over the past year.
The past five years have also been something of a golden era for publishers. From April 2006 to March 2011, there were six platforms where 200m+ games shipped: DS (780m), Wii (716m), PS2 (483m), PS3 (438m), PSP (252m) and X360 (?). In the previous five years, your only choices were PS2 or GBA for a 200m+ software market, with GC and Xbox each a touch under 200m.
Software data also shows that Wii and PS3 are tracking relatively closely to DS, which has become an 850m software market in less than seven years.
The similarity of software of course does not match up fully with how differently hardware has trended to date:
Nintendo's latest forecast implies DS will become a 905m software market at the end of March 2012. From that point on DS software shipments will reach anywhere from 20m - 150m additional units, depending on how 3DS performs after its price cut. Wii software is currently tracking 130m or so ahead of the DS pace, with PS3 tracking 130m or so behind. By year end, PS3 will likely be about 140m units behind the DS software pace, while Wii will be about 100m ahead still - which suggests Wii will become minimally a 1 billion unit software market, while PS3 will minimally become a 760m software market. I base these claims on trends to date, seen below, and the forecasts Sony and Nintendo have for the rest of the year.
Even barring some kind of unforseen disaster or rapid decline, the current round of hardware should see four of the five machines become 700m+ software markets. Wii and DS are already there, PS3 will be there within two years, and X360 should get to 700m in 12-18 months. In the entire history of video games, the only machines to top 700m units of software before DS were PS1 and PS2, so the results are once again excellent for publishers.
Looking ahead, Nintendo's current forecast calls for 9m DS, 12m Wii, and 16m 3DS systems to be shipped in the March 2012 year, along with 65m DS games, 70m 3DS games, and about 125m Wii games (110m without bundles). Sony forecast calls for about 210m games shipped between PS2, Vita, PSP and PS3, in addition to 4m PS2s, 6m PSPs, 15m PS3s, and whatever amount Vita ships.
Many of the hardware forecasts look a bit problematic to me, based on what we can see happening in sequential four quarter periods and what we can reasonably expect for Christmas 2011. Microsoft doesn't offer Xbox forecasts, so I'm focusing on Sony and Nintendo below.
Sony's PS3 shipped 14.6m units in the year to September 2010 - the full year after the cut to $300, including the PS3 Slim, the Move bounce in mainland Europe, and Final Fantasy XIII in Japan. Since then, PS3 has fallen to 13.7m over the past year. Compared to the 14.2m pace of the March 2011 year, PS3 is also down by 600,000 units in the current fiscal year. That means that in the next nine months Sony has to ship 13.2m PS3s, up from 11.8m PS3s in the nine months to March 2011 to meet its 15m forecast. Its a bit hard to see that, even with a big price cut, as Vita and 3DS will be the hot items over Christmas globally, with X360 and Wii set to outperform PS3 in the USA and UK. If the effect is as big as Sony expects, Microsoft would likely match the cut, and harm Sony further in the USA & UK. Its still not a terrible forecast, but PS3 could easily end up at 13m-14m instead of 15m.
The PS2 forecast is also interesting, as Sony shipped 1.4m PS2s in the June quarter, but kept the forecast at 4m units. PS2 has only been dropping by 15-40% year over year each quarter, so Sony may be aiming for 4.5m or so rather than 4m. Sony's PSP forecast of 6m looks alright, as even though PSP shipped 8.6m units in the past 12 months, PSP will drop off quickly when 3DS becomes $170 / 15,000 Yen in mid-August, and then slow even more once Vita launches. DS should have the 'value portable' market over Christmas, Vita should have the 'high end portable' market, while 3DS takes the 'mainstream portable' market that DS had 60-80% of - leaving PSP to fight for scraps in what should be a pretty bad December quarter. The 6m PSPs will probably split at something like 1.8m / 1.2m / 2.5m / 1m per quarter, which is 6.5m.
For Nintendo, the DS and 3DS forecasts are strange. The Wii forecast looks doable to me - 12m after a 1.56m June quarter can be done with a quarterly split of 1.56m / 1.44m / 7.5m / 1.5m. With the slight rebound in Japanese figures, even without a price cut there, Nintendo should be able to ship around 120,000 Wiis per week through September. The Wii then will get its usual Christmas infusion of million-sellers (Mario & Sonic, Zumba, JD3, Zelda, Kirby, Fortune Street, etc), and my guess is the impact of the price cut will return to some degree in late November / December particularly when someone like Target offers Wii for $119.99 or whatever for Black Friday to get asses into their store.
The 3DS forecast on the other hand is still tough - Nintendo has to ship 15.3m 3DS systems in 9 months, that's almost 50% more than what Wii is forecast to sell in that period, with the 3DS baseline a third lower than the Wii baseline at 80,000 per week. Initially, the price cut should double 3DS hardware for a while, allowing Nintendo to ship 170,000 or so per week from mid-August onwards. The problem is that might only amount to a 1.5m quarter given all the stock that still needs to clear out from the initial shipment. That would leave 3DS at 2.2m for the fiscal year through September, with 13.8m left to ship for the remaining six months of the fiscal year. The December quarter should be huge - Mario Kart is a 20m+ franchise now - its essentially as big as Call of Duty, but exclusive. Even so, its hard to imagine 3DS shipments topping more than 8m in the December quarter - Vita will launch strongly in Japan, and DS Lite will probably be offered for $70-$80 over Christmas in the USA. Japanese 3DS figures are already somewhat strong, and the West should correct strongly towards 3DS in early 2012 with Mario Kart and Super Mario, but its probably still not enough for 16m year. It looks like 3DS will split at 0.7m / 1.5m / 8m / 3.3m - but its hard to see more than 13m-14m 3DS systems shipped for the year.
The original DS forecast also is strange. Nintendo has shipped 1.44m DS systems so far in the fiscal year. The September quarter should be a similar amount, with the March 2012 quarter closer to 1m. That means Nintendo needs to ship 5m in the December quarter to reach 9m for the year. DS shipments reached 8.7m in the December 2010 quarter though - so 5m is probably too much of a drop. DS hardware can probably still reach 6m or so, particularly if retailers start to discount it independently to make room for the rapidly growing 3DS and just-launching Vita.
Overall, 2011 looks like the bottom of the cycle for hardware. Starting in 2012, figures should be much better, as Vita, 3DS, and Wii U will all be picking up steam and offsetting the declining older hardware markets. Software could decline a bit further yet though, with the new systems set to have tiny bases in 2012 and the older systems set to have pretty low annual purchasing rates for the average user.
Contact VGChartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com
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I don't see wii shipping 1.44M in Q3, more like 1M, and for Q4, 6M, Q1- 0.6M, just over 95M. Nintendo may have over shipped a bit in Q2, thinking price cut will do a difference so they wont ship much in Q3.
What do you mean they over shipped? You do realize that retailers have to order units from Nintendo and that is the number of units they sold in Q2. If retailers have to many Wiis in stock that will only lower Wii sales in Q3.
Any way you look at it, if retailers order too much then they wont bee to order more for a while till they sold enough to buy more from Nintendo. 1.5M
hopeing for next gen to be announced for late 2012 here...
also
MS=USA
sony=england
Nintendo= USSR... makes sense if u think about it
capitalism= USA/MS
keep tradition with sony
our way is best no matter what we arnt changing with nintendo.
The Wii is declining faster than I would have thought, maybe the Wii is a ephemera : lack of good games or old-gen hardware showing its age or casual market saturated ?
The author of this article does not know how to be subjective.
I agree with the general argument and like you I believe Nintendo will have some trouble making their numbers for both the DS, the 3DS and the Wii.
It's reasonable to expect one of those to have a stellar holydays but at some point they will cannibalize each others sales so it's hard to see how all 3 platforms can meet the target that Nintendo set up. Where I disagree is that I think Wii will actually be the one to miss its new target as the incoming price cut on PS3/360 will impact Wii sales and Nintendo isn't in a position now where they can lower the price of the Wii to fight back...
What is even more disappointing is that Nintendo just missed their numbers by a tonn, they set a new forecast and it looks like the odds of them making that forecast are actually not that great....... They lowered the forecast so much, they could have lowered it a little more without further impact but if they miss the new target after lowering the old one by 80% they will loose whatever faith investors still had in their executive team....
Here's a question that will stir endless controversy: of the "big three" pictured, and the big three we know, who correlates to whom? Which company is Stalin's Soviet Union, Roosevelt's America, and Churchill's Britain?
Also to add something legitimate, i think the high PSP shipments may be indicative of stock-clearing
Anyway it's amusing to See PS3 and 360 closing the Wii WW gap over the last 12 months, has that ever happend for a market leader?
Is there not a mistake re the 3DS on here? In this section it says total sales are 4.3 million yet in the worldwide section the sales figure given is 3.3, is this a mistake or am I just not following, as the worldwide section had the 3ds at around 3.9 million a couple of weeks ago.
Huh, the PSP sold over 70 million units.
No I think the last two quarters indicate the opposite for Wii actually. HW sales have been greater than shipments for Wii - they shipped too many late in 2010 and have cleared them out since.
I agree Wii will ship about 1.5 in Q3, Xmas Q will be down this year (around 7 mill) so they have to make up the rest of that 3.4M forecast across Q3/Q1. So 1.5 for Q3 and 1 - 2 for Q1 next year, though they might drop their forecast again. That said if they shipped too many in Q4 last year (like you claim) they're not going to make the same mistake again are they, so even 7 mill looks optimistic if they shipped 8.7 last xmas and that was with overshipping (by a lot if you go by this years sales/shipped.
7M too much, 5.8M is the best bet, TheSource said that Nintendo most likely shipped too much in Americas at some point, but 1.5M in Q3 seems like a lot. Also they will drop the forcast again and again.
Why did they ship 1.8 million PSP's?
Wow 360 is the slowest selling console, this gen even will all the bragging 360 fanboys do this is surprizing
ur an idiot if u truely think that. xbox doesn't sell in japan period therefore sony has a 3rd market that MS doesnt have. remove japanese sales and xbox has a decent lead on PS3.
that said, i just got a PS3, and its great, but will never replace my xbox, but maybe next gen i'l get a PS4 before the nextbox
I think SONY will cut PS3 to $199 and while Microsoft will try to match that with their 250 GB model, I just don't see them dropping 4GB model to $99. They will probably cut it to $149 or $129. SONY has a lot of great games coming out and PS3 has a lot more features with Blu-Ray and 3D. I hope SONY offers some really nice software updates with 3.70 title update and if they do it right they could have their best year yet.
@Mr Khan:
Ninty = Rossevelt/USA
Sony = Churchill/British Empire
MS = Stalin/USSR
Gut definitions, haha.
