Nintendo Wii trumps Xbox 360 in sales

By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor -- Electronic News, 8/24/2007

Marking the first time a company has been the leader in both the home console and handheld gaming market since 1994 when Nintendo’s Super NES and Gameboy dominated worldwide, videogame sell-through tracking firm VG Chartz is reporting that Nintendo has regained its former glory as lifetime sales of the company's Wii home gaming system have passed Microsoft’s Xbox 360 on a worldwide basis as of Thursday.

The Nintendo DS handheld gaming system holds the majority of market share for portable video games with 68.1 percent of the market, thanks to 48.8 million units sold worldwide, compared to Sony’s Playstation Portable, which holds 31.9 percent market share, based on sales of 22.8 million units, according to the firm’s website.

VG Chartz tracks consoles sold to consumers and not to retailers and other outlets. The firm notes that while Microsoft’s Xbox 360 lifetime shipments may be slightly higher than the shipments of Nintendo’s Wii, more Wii consoles made it from retailer to consumers than Xbox 360s, due to the fact that Wii remains in a state of shortage in most regions around the world and units are sold just shortly after they become available to consumers.

The firm believes that this explains why numbers on the front page of its website are always a bit lower than the numbers given by the manufacturers themselves: To Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo every console that made it to retailers is “sold,” while in reality these consoles may be lying in retailer warehouses and outlets for weeks until they are sold to consumers.

Two years ago, the firm pointed out that very few analysts would have predicted the Nintendo Wii to be market leader against the Playstation and Xbox. VG Chartz’ data is based on sample data from retailers all over the world which indicates that the week ending August 23, Nintendo's Wii -- released one year after the Xbox 360 in November 2006 -- currently standing at 10.57 million consoles sold, passed Xbox 360 lifetime sales of 10.51 million units, making Nintendo the new market leader in both the home and handheld videogame console businesses.

The Wii console outsold Microsoft’s Xbox 360 by a margin of 2.3 to 1 worldwide on average each week since its release, selling at an even faster rate than the most successful console ever created (Sony’s Playstation 2), despite still being sold out in most major markets.

The firm explained that its projections are based on sampled retailer data from all over the world, collects data from a carefully selected group of retailers and determines projected sales figures for entire regions with factors including knowledge of market size, retailer market shares and retailer bias.

VG Chartz said it expect this to be a milestone for the current generation as in just two years, home console sales for the three major manufacturers have effectively reversed, expected to have a large impact on third party publishers and undoubtedly influence the decisions they make in the future.

One factor that the firm said no doubt helped Nintendo’s Wii to gain so quickly is the console’s broad appeal across all age groups, demographics and countries.

Geographically, current sales are almost evenly split between the three major markets. 3.46 million units have been sold in Japan, 4.24 million Wii units have been sold in the American market which includes Canada and South America, and 2.87 million units have been sold to other markets, including Europe and Australia along with a few niche markets, the firm concluded.