Game Consoles Sell Over 3.2 Million Units in November

Ground Glass writes "While there wasn't any question that November was going to be a huge month for gaming (what with those two consoles coming out and all), it's still impressive to see the numbers. In short, Nintendo's DS was the big winner with over 600,000 units sold, though the Wii and Xbox 360 also each broke half a million. The PS3 probably came in at around 200K all told for the month. Convert those numbers into dollars and you're looking at one very fat and happy industry." From the Next Generation article: "In its monthly report analyst Arcadia Investment says console sales in November topped 3.2 million units. Arcadia says hardware sales increased by at least 50% year on year, with software up about 20%. Retail dollars increased by about 25-30% to about $1.6 billion, compared to $1.3 billion in November 2005. "

could have been more

[netsfr]

Could have been 3.2M + 1, but there are no Wii's to be found here, the store had 20 units the first day, and sold out since.

Sony keeps heavy advertising about the PS3, but what good does it do if they get me interested in it, all to have me go down to the store to look at an empty shelf... It's having the opposite effect, more of a turn off than getting me to want one at this point.

Re:Ranked in terms of consoles sold last month:

[DrXym]

If I were Sony I wouldn't be worred about PS2 sales. Every sale means profit and more potential converts to the PS3. Maybe not today but in a few years from now. Perhaps they even see the PS2 as a good way to stay in a holding pattern until the price of the PS3 becomes more reasonable.

Re:Ranked in terms of consoles sold last month:

[AuMatar]

With consoles, you don't have time. If people don't buy your console now, then developers won't target it (they'll target the Wii, 360, or PS2). If devs don't target it, it won't sell in the future either. Getting a large install base early is an absolute necessity, or you won't have one late.

Re:Ranked in terms of consoles sold last month:

[be-fan]

Bullshit. Dvorak was spouting off in the mid 1990s about how nobody would ever need anything more than a 200 MHz Pentium. It wasn't true then, it's not true now.

The NES to SNES upgrade was actually relatively minor. You got more colors and bigger sprites, but the CPU was still weak, so the games were the same, but prettier. The SNES -> N64 transition was huge. It was the first console that could do 3D properly. Mario 64 changed platformers completely, and would not have been possible on any previous console. FPS as a genre wasn't really feasible until then either. The PS2 was the first console that had the horsepower to have complex environments, because the N64 and PS could not push enough polygons to do more than very simplistic environments.

This generation is potentially as interesting as the N64 one. The new consoles have an order of magnitude more power than the previous gen, and more importantly, they have a lot of power that's independent of the graphics pipeline. Wheras the main CPU in the PS2 spends much of its time crunching geometry to feed the rasterizer, the geometry processor in the RSX frees the Cell in the PS3 from much of that. Wheras previous consoles had to squeeze in AI and physics into a small slice of time between handling graphics code, the current batch can spend a lot of main CPU time on those things.

Gears of War is really a prime example. Even if you toned down the graphics, such a game could not be done on previous-gen systems. They don't have the horsepower to do either the physics, nor the level complexity (battlefields strewn with junk that serves as cover).

Wii profitable? Yes.

[LKM]

Uhm, the development costs are already accounted for. Nintendo paid them. It was in their past reports. The Wii isn't yet profitable as a project, but it is profitable in that it helps Nintendo make a profit at the end of the next quarter. Every Wii sold makes Nintendo money. Every PS3 sold makes Sony lose money.

Re:Ranked in terms of consoles sold last month:

[jackbird]

The PS2 was the first console that had the horsepower to have complex environments, because the N64 and PS could not push enough polygons to do more than very simplistic environments.

*cough*Dreamcast*cough*