Wii versus PS3 versus XBox 360 market share data II

MAY 2012 UPDATE AVAILABLE AT: https://theschwartz.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/wii-xbox-ps3-nintendo-ds-gameboy-advance-psp-iphone-ipad-global-market-share-and-sales-comparison/

My previous posts on this topic have been my most heavily trafficed since I started blogging, so I obviously have to continue with last month’s (and the first quarter’s) data. My previous posts are at

Wii versus PS3 versus XBox 360 market share data

Wii versus PS3 versus XBox 360 market share predictions

Lots of coverage on the latest industry data; here are some highlight:

From the Associated Press: March Video Game Sales Jump

U.S. video game sales jumped 33 percent to $1.1 billion in March, boosted by strong sales of gaming consoles from Nintendo despite ongoing shortages for its newest system

Software sales grew 15 percent for the month, to $574 million

For the first quarter, software sales climbed 30 percent to $1.6 billion, while total U.S. video game sales were up 54 percent to $3.3 billion.

Of the independent software publishers, Activision Inc. more than tripled its monthly sales of games for consoles and handheld systems

U.S. sales at Electronic Arts Inc., the world’s largest video game publisher, declined 28 percent in March

(This is after, as I reported last time, a 26% drop in February. Ouch.)

For the first quarter, hardware sales nearly doubled to $1.3 billion from $659 million in the year-ago period.

The Wii, Nintendo’s playful system that has players jumping around their living room for certain games, seems to be succeeding in drawing a wider audience to gaming.

And from Reuters: Nintendo’s Wii Again No. 1 New Game Console-NPD

The Wii was again the No. 1 current-generation video game console, selling 259,000 units. That $250 console uses a motion-sensitive controller that has been popular with mainstream gamers as well as new audiences like females, senior citizens and very young children.

Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 U.S. unit sales were 199,000 in March and outpaced Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 unit sales of 130,000. The high-end versions of those machines sell for $400 and $600, respectively.

Sony’s last-generation PlayStation 2 continued to see strong sales with consumers picking up 280,000 units.

Overall video game related sales rose 54 percent in the first three months of 2007, to $3.3 billion, NPD said.

Here’s a table summarizing the data across this post and the last:

	February	March	Q1 2007
Wii	335,000	259,000	1,030,000
PS2	295,000	280,000
PS3	127,000	130,000	501,000
XBox 360	228,000	199,000	721,000

Note that Sony is holding it’s position better than Wii or XBox 360, at least in this month-to-month. We’ll see how it looks next month.

The year to year trend as described above is most important, with 54% to 100% increases in total video games sales and in console hardware sales.

Activision is the software company doing the most right things, as measured by their sales. And EA continues to slide. Hope their pipeline delivers quickly…

Could Apple Become Games Console King? Part II

Here’s the article from MacNN:

Apple TV: RSS plugin, video games, bounty

Here’s the most relevant highlight:

newly released hack allows users to play video games on Apple TV via video game emulation for NES, SNES, N64, and Sega Genesis game consoles. After enabling SSH and installing VNC, users can install Richard Bannister’s free emulation software for Mac OS X, including Nestopia 1.3.6 for the original Nintendo Entertainment System (US), Generator 0.4.2 for the Sega Genesis, BSNES 0.17 for Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and Sixtyforce 0.9.0 for Nintendo64.

I blogged first about this question last year, in Could Apple Become Games Console King?  This was only one of nine killer scenarios I mentioned in last year’s blog:

• play a classic arcade game running in an arcade emulator running on the iTV itself

The MacNN article lists several other hacks that have been made that push toward getting some of those other killer scenarios I also mentioned.  More from the MacNN article:

Following last week’s revelation that Apple is not disabling hacked devices, over the past few days readers have developed a RSS plugin for Apple TV that offers the ability to display RSS feeds (version 1.x/2.x) within the Apple TV interface. While still in beta, the plugin is expected to be updated with support for ATOM feeds and video RSS feeds (streamed rather than synced via iTunes).

Users have already managed to get a full version of Mac OS X and the Joost internet television application running on the device as well as hacked the Apple TV USB port, enabled Xvid files, and provided instructions for upgrading the internal hard drive.

Note the link there, if you’re curious about drilling in, to the article about an Apple spokespersons official assertion that they are not monitoring or disabling hacked AppleTVs.  From that article:

Apple on Thursday afternoon denied allegations that it was undoing hacks on the Apple TV. A company spokesperson asserted that Apple has a resolutely hands-off approach to the media hub, choosing not to monitor or control user habits through users who allow the device on to the Internet. Owners can modify both the hardware and software as much as they like as long as they understand the risk of voiding the warranty, Apple said.

Whether Apple or Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo or someone else gets to the full function killer convergence device in our living rooms first, someone’s going to.  Here’s my product description from last year’s blog.  I’ll stand in line to buy one of these:

The really really interesting potential for this, if they do it like customers would want it, instead of as proprietary business instincts will want it – the really interesting potential for this is to make it a cross-platform convergence device, which will let us do whatever we want with our TV and entertainment center:

• play music from our iPod or other mobile music device
• take calls from our cell phones
• watch DVDs or MP3s or Tivo or any other video stream
• play a game that runs on our PC or Mac or Linux box
• play a game that runs on our XBox 360 or PS3 or Wii
• play a game that runs on our PSP or GBA or Zune
• play a classic arcade game running in an arcade emulator running on the iTV itself
• surf the web – putting that in one bullet isn’t really fair; there’s a whole range of Web apps which would be unprecented on a good audio/video entertainment system – just think about how much is happening with digital media of all kinds on the web, and how ideal our home entertainment system is for all those kinds of digital media
• manage, organize, tag and edit our audio or video or digital photo collections, right from an ideally comfortable, loud and big-screen seat