Nintendo Slaughters Competition in US, But Wii Music Slow

The latest sales are in for the month of October, courtesy of the NPD Group, and as in every other month of the year so far, Nintendo has totally annihilated the competition on the hardware front, whilst the Xbox 360 continues to give a very good show in terms of sheer software numbers sold. Clearly it is getting more and more difficult for Nintendo's representatives to give formal comments on the monthly sales since barely anything is changing each period, with neither Wii nor Nintendo DS slowing down at all, and with the Thanksgiving period almost upon us and the festive season just around the corner, along with the release of Animal Crossing: City Folk (Let's Go to the City in Europe), it surely comes down to a matter of just how many units Nintendo can pump into retail.

Wii and Nintendo DS topped the U.S. sales charts and combined to sell more than 1.29 million units in October. Nintendo sold 803,210 Wii consoles and 491,176 Nintendo DS systems in October, according to the independent NPD Group, which tracks video game sales in the United States. These figures bring the lifetime U.S. sales for Wii to more than 13.35 million and Nintendo DS to more than 23.02 million, extending their leads as the best-selling hardware of this generation.

Nintendo's total hardware unit sales represent a 25.7 percent increase over October 2007. They also account for 59.3 percent of the industry's total hardware unit sales. Wii Fit, the game that combines fun and fitness, sold nearly half a million copies in the United States in October, six months after it launched. The lifetime U.S. sales for Wii Fit now total more than 2.83 million.

Nintendo provides consumers with the best value not only among video games, but also among most entertainment options. Nintendo also provides an incomparable range of experiences that everyone can enjoy, whether you've been playing for years or are just getting into video games.
- Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing.

1.) Fable II (360, Microsoft) - 790,000 | NEW
2.) Wii Fit (Wii, Nintendo) - 487,000 | 2,833,000
3.) Fallout 3 (360, Bethesda) - 375,000 | NEW
4.) Mario Kart Wii (Wii, Nintendo) - 290,000 | 3,376,000
5.) Wii Play (Wii, Nintendo) - 282,000 | 7,134,000
6.) Saints Row 2 (360, THQ) - 270,000 | NEW
7.) SOCOM: US Navy SEALs Confrontation (PS3, Sony) - 231,000 | NEW
8.) LittleBigPlanet (PS3, Sony) - 215,000 | NEW
9.) NBA 2K9 (360, Take 2) - 202,000 | NEW
10.) Dead Space (360, EA) - 193,000 | NEW
11.) Guitar Hero: World Tour (360, Activision)
12.) Guitar Hero: World Tour (Wii, Activision)
13.) Kirby Super Star Ultra (NDS, Nintendo)
14.) Fallout 3 (PS3, Bethesda)
15.) Dead Space (PS3, EA)
16.) Rock Band 2 (PS3, EA)
17.) NBA 2K9 (PS3, Take 2)
18.) Far Cry 2 (360, Ubisoft)
19.) FIFA Soccer 09 (360, EA)
20.) Guitar Hero: World Tour (PS3, Activision)

The trio of Wii Fit, Mario Kart and Wii Play still show no signs of slowing down as we approach the lucrative Thanksgiving and festive periods. In fact, Wii Play has still yet to drop out of the Top 10 since launching alongside the Wii, with sales now at 7,134,000, making it the best-selling single SKU that we currently have data for, usurping Grand Theft Auto San Andreas on PlayStation 2, which sold 6,970,000.

There is good news is that Kirby's latest DS game has been a resounding success already, just as it has in Japan, landing at No.13 in a chart that normally does not feature many, if any DS games at all. Many might be surprised at how low Guitar Hero: World Tour has started, but it needs to be remembered that the price is much higher than Legends of Rock due to all the extra instruments. The PS2 edition fails to break the Top 20, the PS3 version just scrapes in at No.20, whilst the Wii and 360 ones linger just outside the Top 10, at No.12 and No.11, respectively. In total, all SKUs of Activision Blizzard's major game for Christmas sold 534,000 units. Rock Band 2, after two months on sale and without a Wii edition just now, has sold a total of 600,000 units.

But where is Wii Music? Well, the NPD Group states that since release in October only sold 81,000, a far cry from the storming start that Wii Fit had. Cammie had more to say on the matter:

You'll see in [the NPD sales] that it did about somewhere [like] 65 or 66,000 based on our internal numbers for the two weeks that was reported. By comparison, NPD reported that Wii Fit sold more than 687,000 copies in its first month of sale. We're predicting that it's going to be an evergreen title. And if you look at titles like Brain Age, it's about the same as what Brain Age did during its first few weeks and went on to sell 2.5 million copies. Wii Fit certainly had a larger launch than that. But I think that people are starting to understand Wii Music.

People have a box in their head of what music genre games are all about. And we're doing something that is a complete departure from that. As people start to experience that and tell other people about it, I have no doubt that Wii Music is going to be a long-selling, top-selling game for us. I feel as EVP of sales and marketing, [it is] both a responsibility and a real opportunity and privilege to take this game that is so unique and so much from the heart of Mr. [Shigeru] Miyamoto, and make sure that people are exposed to it and understand it. To that end, Nintendo has been showcasing Wii Music with local musicians around the country and is working with schools and an organisation representing 100,000 music educators in America to integrate the game into a music education curriculum. [ So anyone comparing Wii Fit launch sales to Wii Music sales and deem the latter a failure ] would be off-base to say that. Very few of our titles are launch-and-move-on these days. Certainly something like Wii Music, we have a long-term commitment to.
- Cammie Dunaway talking with Multiplayer at the New York Grand Hyatt.

Nintendo may be playing it cool about the performance of Wii Music because really with such a large Wii userbase and continued monthly dominance, chances are high for the game to eventually amass impressive sales. Just check out this month's hardware figures, along with the 2008 totals and lifetime figures below:

Wii - 803,000 | 5,981,000 | 13,351,000
Nintendo DS - 491,000 | 5,341,000 | 22,893,000
Xbox 360 - 371,000 | 2,459,000 | 11,613,000
PlayStation Portable - 193,000 | 2,308,000 | 12,806,000
PlayStation 3 - 190,000 | 2,441,000 | 5,684,000
PlayStation 2 - 136,000 | 1,887,000 | 42,743,000

With sales like this, no wonder Nintendo is not keen to talk about the future WiiHD or even rush to bring the Nintendo DSi to the US market!