USA Retail Sales Preview - December 2009 - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 13 January 2010 / 6,149 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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@VGC / Brett Walton : "all time USA video game hardware record set by the DS last December - 3.04m."
I see on the chart "2.94M", what's wrong?
"Activision had the best month for publishers not named Nintendo in the United States"
Lol, too funny. Yay for Wii!
DS broke a yearly record - not a monthly record. It sold 3.04m in the USA by NPD last December. This year, DS was like 7.8m through Nov - so it sold at least 2.3m to set a yearly record, but less 3.0m since Nintendo isn't saying it broke the December record.
i was under the impression that DS broke its record from last year
3M+
Nintendo really killed it this Holiday.
Great sales to all and to all a goodnight!!
Nintendo Said DS broke its record IIRC (In the article which estimated Wii's Big December).
I think its likly up a few percent rather than down.
pretty impressive that ps2 is only down 19% yoy. it still has a price drop or two to go so at this rate it might not be phased out completely until the ps4 arrives.
hold on a sec here the nov 09 preview showed 731k consoles sold for ps3 and 700k for 360 in USA
how come the #s are different in here?
source http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=6137
Oh wait, PSP and PS2. I guess that's where the decline is?
Where is the decline coming from? I've checked that Wii isn't down YoY in software, it's up in hardware enough to offset the 20% price reduction. Taking DS into it, hardware is flat, and DS software is down YoY by nearly the same amount Wii is up, overall software on Nintendo systems is down only 100K units.
I haven't looked into it but I'm guessing the industry decline is largely coming from the 360 then? I assume PS3 is up in both hardware and software.
How much Mario can one chart contain?
I'm counting 7 titles (including Olympics).
He is still the undisputed King of Games.
The numbers seem right even if the label is wrong
ioi: have you used the right table for sw. it says nov-09?
More DS games in the list than November, Nice, and even Nintendo themselfs said wii sold 3 Million in USA last month so Vgchartz were very nearly spot-on, let's hope NPD is very similar.
The attach for PS3 seems to be an awful lot higher in the USA than other territories. The X360 has a near 2:1 HW ratio over the PS3 in the region, yet the software ratios are nowhere near that high, except in select circumstances (like MW2).
Why?
So Wii up considerably and PS3 up massively. The PSP is the real loser
L4D II has done surprisingly well, and it is also nice to see Uncharted 2 doing reasonably well
