Console Horserace for Second Place
The domestic video game industry has slowed for a sixth straight month.
The latest NPD data for August shows a 16 decline in overall sales from last August. Overall console sales were off a staggering 25 percent year over year, with software sales down 15 percent.
Nintendo’s Wii remains the top selling home console, selling over 277,000 units in August. The Nintendo DS is the top console overall, as the portable sold over half a million for the month.
A combination of a reworked console and a series of price cut had yielded a battle for second place in the console race. Microsoft’s XBOX 360 series has still edged out the title with 215,400 units sold in August. But the PS3 slim–and a $299 price point–has significantly helped Sony. NPD reports 210,000 units sold for August, and you may have read various PR touts about a 300% increase in PS3 sales–no doubt a result of this perfect sales storm.
On the software side, the Nintendo Wii is beginning to lose its grip on the market. The next generation editions of Madden NFL 10 took the #1 (360) and #2 (PS3) spots. Still, Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii retain spots in the top 10.
The future doesn’t look so rosy for games. Analysts expect growth to slow through the end of the year, with the Holiday shopping season becoming a very critical point for all the big console and software makers.
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It doesn’t suprise me that the Wii version of Madden does and did poorly. EA, the Gamecube, PS2, and Original X Box could all do impressive realism, why is the (more powerful) Wii a problem now? Also, it’s surprising that the PS3 only sold 210,000. With the new price drop I thought it’d have sold more.
“The Nintendo Wii is beginning to lose its grip on the market”
That’s awsome! I mean c’mon. Nintendo has been on the top way to long now. I hope more people will buy PS3 or 360 instead of Wii. I have no problem with the Wii, but with Nintendo. I don’t really care about if they made the Wii or not. But I’m just glad when Nintendo get problems. They really need to feel what a problem is.
I hope the whole company dies next generation. They’re the most annoying company ever! And everyone loves their overrated series like Mario and the feaking useless list goes on!
So I hope the really lose the grip of the market soon.
But I’m not suprised that the PS3 haven’t sold so much yet. I think that the PS3 will have many copies sold at the end of the year!
Only 299$or a so awsome console like that! Wow, that’s just amazing. But it’s still too expensive in Europe.
Anyone who would cry out for an industry standby like Nintendo to fall into ruin is truly unbalanced. Nintendo has brought more to the game industry than any other company still existing today. If Nintendo were to be completely disbanded, you can bet the rest of the industry would follow suit. If someone had said the same thing about Sega, you’d be frothing at the mouth, telling them how Sing is “teh gr8est thing evarrr111!!!1!” In fact, I take my first statement back, you’re not ‘unbalanced’, you’re a stupid baiased fanboy. Fanboys ruin everything.
Yay! Wii and Nintendo rules! Who cares if they don’t are as strong as one or two years ago? They are still on the top and thats all I need! NIIIINTENDO!!!
@Werehog: SEGA traitor! XD
@Sonikku Master: No I’m not! SEGA RULES! SONIC! SEEEEGAAA!!! But they have ugly characters… even Sonic was ugly in the beginning! Uuuu… But still! They rule! And Nintendo too!
SONIC never was ugly, SONIC ALWAYS HAD AN WAY PASS COOL APPEAREACE
! SEEEGAAAAAAAAAA
@SU: Yeah… but he was fat and just lookes strange… anyway, he was ok. But all other SEGA characters are ugly. What did think about when they did Nights, Alex Kidd or that chicken boy in ASR!? I know. They just wanted to make good and a bit funny characters like Nintendo. But Nintendo knew how crazy characters should look… SEGA didn’t… But Amigo is okay and Sonic is SUPER COOL in his new awesome look!
Maybe there are some other good SEGA characters, but I think the most of them I have seen is just… ugly!
Man I don’t agree with you (I’m sorry
) I think au contraire, Sega characters are mutch better sorry but that’s what I think (the oppositte) SEGA RULES! 
@Osnic: Anyone who seriously wants Nintendo to die either doesn’t know anything about the industry, is crazy, or wants videogames in general to die. No, seriously. As Skai Cyan said, I’d be absolutely shocked if the game industry continued normally if Nintendo spontaneously died. Even if the industry didn’t die, there’d still be a stock crash, billions upon billions of dollars would be lost, and hundreds of developers would probably go out a business. Why the hell would you want that to happen?
If Nintendo were to die, it’d have to be over a long period of time where competitors have gripped enough of the market that the death of Nintendo would only be a punch to the gut, rather than the gunshot to the gut that it would be if Nintendo died by next generation. So you’re just going to have to wait…a long, long time.
@SU: Yeah, we can’t think the same all the time!
@Unknownlight: I think you’re pretty wrong and right at the same time if I understood it right. The video games won’t stop if Nintendo disapears. Everything would keep going as it always has. But it would be a very big loss. Nintendo always come with all new ideas. And they have all the basic series that everyone can look at and say “Wow, that’s how a real game in that genre should be”.
And Nintendo expand the vide game audience a lot now. There are so many new gamers comming just because of Wii and DS.
So that Nintendo are there means a lot. But I don’t think anything would be destoyed if they disapeard. It’s just a big loss.
@Werehog: I’m talking about if Nintendo disappeared off the face of the Earth NOW. Like, at this moment. If that happened I very much believe there would be a videogame crash. I never said the games would disappear, I just meant that our current system would crash and then someone would have to put the extra effort to start it all up again. Let me try and explain:
First of all, if Nintendo disappeared then all the money they had gets lost from the market (it’s estimated that they made a TRILLION yen last year. No, I’m not joking). So then after Nintendo falls all the developers that made games for Nintendo systems would either get hit with a huge blow to the stomach or just go out of business. And, again, that’s A LOT of developers. Even Sega lost a ton of money on the 360/PS3 versions of Sonic Unleashed, but more than made up for it with the Wii sales. They were betting on this. If Nintendo wasn’t around then Sega wouldn’t have made Sonic Unleashed in the first place.
Second of all, think of all the Nintendo fanboys and other casual gamers that play Wii and DS. If Nintendo died, these guys aren’t going to switch to Microsoft/Sony. The fanboys would just whine and complain and then buy older games that they missed the first time around, and the casual gamers would just continue playing Wii Sports until they got bored of videogames. BAM, another ton of money lost from the industry.
Third, and most important, Microsoft and Sony are losing money from their systems. That’s a fact. Their strategy has always been to sell the systems for less than it costs to make one, and make up for the loss of profit from game sales. That strategy is failing, badly. There’s even a rumour (I repeat, a RUMOUR, don’t take this as fact) that Microsoft might not release an 8th generation console because the stockholders are getting pissed off at the lack of profits and may not allow Microsoft game studios to release another console and “waste more money”.
So lets imagine worst-case-scenario here. Nintendo dies. Some developers go bankrupt. Many investors in the game business, seeing the damage, retreat from the industry to try and leave with as much money as possible, taking tons of money with them. Because of the huge blow, many developers don’t have enough money to make very many, if any at all, good titles. Bad games are released, and fewer people buy them. Therefore, Microsoft and Sony lose even MORE money, as their entire strategy depends on people buying a lot of games. Then the Microsoft stockholders finally get their way and disband Microsoft Game Studios, which in turn makes almost all 360 developers go out of business. This leaves Sony as the only one left in an industry that’s quickly losing money and developers. Since just letting the PS3 EXIST has Sony lose money, sooner or later they’d pull the plug on the PS3 and try again some other day.
This is worst-case-scenario, and probably wouldn’t happen, but this is the crash I’m talking about. Nintendo dying NOW, in the industry’s already somewhat weak state, would be suicide. And I didn’t even take into account the recession!
No, I’m not saying it would be the end of games, I’m saying that it could be the end of developers and systems that we know today, just like how almost every developer pre-1983 died out in The Great Video Game Crash.
But this is all just hypothetical. If Nintendo actually died then they would die because another company had taken over the game business, in which case none of this would happen. =/
@Unknownlight: Yeah, now I understand. But that won’t happend.
I’m not saying I want Nintendo to die, I simply want SEGA to reborn on the console
hehe, I just want that people “almost” stop to buy mario games, so Nintendo could realize how bad they are (yes I don’t like mario, but If the “world ended” and Sonic games stop being puublished [I'll die If that happened] (I Love Aventure/Plataforming/Action/Speed games hehe) my second choice for those type of games would be Crash Bandicoot and MAYBE only then I’ll picked up mario, oh well, My whis is that SEGA could Lanch another CONSOLE and they could rule the market following by Nintendo just like the old times!!! 
Oh well…SONIC AND SEGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA RULES!!!
SONIC FOREVER, THE MOST WAY PASS COOL HEDGEHOG, AND THE BEST VIDEO GAME CHARACTER ALIVE YET!!!
Still I would’nt trade SONIC FOR NO ONE!
If Mario dies, then plat-forming games and franchises (especially Sonic) would die along with it and prove no-one wants plat-formers anymore.
@Spider: Haha! I can’t belive that. Mario has always done the same thing and he only changed the history with his earlier games. Now we don’t need him anymore.
Ow… That hurt… oh no wait, it didn’t because every other established franchise (besides Sonic) do the same thing over again too. Halo, Mario, Mega Man (all three universes), Pokemon, Zelda, MGS, Metriod, LBP (now) just to name a few and if you like any (or more) well established franchises I just stated, than hypocritize is strong than I thought. Sorry, try again.
@Spider: Yep! They do! That’s true! But we still don’t need them for the genre to survive.
Exactly!!!
and some others just to compete with, but not mario in my opinion
We Only need SONIC
“Yep! They do! That’s true! But we still don’t need them for the genre to survive.”
Werehog, I am getting a strong signal off the Fanboy Radar from you. It’s ppl like you who are the reason why Sonic isn’t as great as he was on the Sega Console. You seem like the kind of person who’d like any crap Sega will come up with as long as Sonic is the main character =/. And in response to your previous posts of how “all the other sega characters are sooooo ugly, but sonic is awesome” tells me that you are probably 12 years old or something. No real or old Sega fan talks that way, especially when they know that Sega comes out with great characters like Ulala from Space Channel 5, NiGHTS from NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams and Sparkster from Rocket Knight Adventures, just to name a few.
And I can tell you that the mentioned characters are certainly NOT UGLY.
Spider owned you on that pathetic comment on how “Mario only does the same thing in his games”, Sonic doesn’t I’ll admit but have you ever thought that was the reason why Sonic DOESN’T SELL AS GREAT AS MARIO? Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic 06 etc, they all suck in someway cause they always try to implement some sort of gimmic like Storybook Telling or futuristic naive hedgehogs.
SU:
“Exactly!!!
We Only need SONIC and some others just to compete with, but not mario in my opinion”
Why don’t you want Mario to compete with? Afraid he’ll just keep pwning your gimmicy Sonic games? Hmm?
You also fall into the category of a fanboy, just like Werehog. You clearly show that you also will just play any crap that Sega comes up with nowadays regardless if it’s just one big glitchy mess or the story sucks. How about you go look for the old genesis sonic games and play them, or play Sonic Adventure 1 and 2. Then come back and tell us what is the big difference between those games and the shit games that are out today.
As a matter of fact, this link on Sega’s views of Sonic should clear things up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjK8YtVJHvk
There is nothing wrong with Mario, so you and Werehog can just stop with the bashing unless you can give me a few good reasons why you should bash him.