Microsoft Xbox 360 Outsells Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3 Combined – Research

by Anton Shilov
01/11/2007 | 05:43 PM

Still, Sony’s PlayStation 2 seems to be ahead of everything, while the dynamics of the PlayStation  3 and Wii sales may be much more remarkable than Microsoft could claim for its game consoles.

NPD Research, an independent market tracking agency, has indicated that back in December there were shipped 1.132 million Xbox 360 game consoles, 604 thousand Nintendo Wii game machines and 490.7 thousand Sony PlayStation 3 much-anticipated game consoles in the USA. Given the shortage of the PlayStation 3, Microsoft’s game console can claim victory over competing systems, as its market share was 51% back last month.

“That’s a significant milestone. There’s an old rule that the first to 10 million [new-generation console sales] has a distinct advantage,” David Hufford, director of Xbox product management, told the Financial Times news-paper on Thursday.

NPD’s market figures are considerably lower compared to those released by companies like Nintendo and Sony, who indicate the amount shipped to their retail and etail partners, while NPD estimates the number of products sold to end-users.

Previous-generation game consoles are still much more than popular due to relatively low price points. For example, Sony Computer Systems America alone sold around 1.4 million of PlayStation 2 game consoles, which is about the same amount of new generation game consoles sold combined.

Video game and hardware sales reached $3.7 billion in December, which is up 28%, NPD’s figures indicate. Moreover, the total U.S. gaming market accounted for $12.5 billion in 2006, a 19% increase year-over-year.

There is no information concerning sales of Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 worldwide, but given a more than a year advantage, Microsoft is more than likely to have sold much higher amount of units globally.