Yeah, gaming hardware in the US isn’t exactly gunning for Olympic Gold in sales right now. Its nose dived 37 percent, and has year-over-year reveal NPD July numbers.
Meanwhile in Sony land… Executives aren’t worried at all because the PS3 is ”just getting warmed up”, and then they immediately move on to point out flaws in their rivals. Facts FTW!
Nintendo Wii is beginning to show the strain, they managed to shift 252,200 units last month in the US, which is down 54.50 percent from July ‘08. Nintendo DS shifted 538.9K, down 11.42 percent.
PlayStation 2 sold 108K, down 30.55 percent. PS3 sold 121.8K, down 45.84 percent. PSP sold 122.8K, down 44.61 percent. Basically, the PlayStation platform has had a really crap July ‘09.
The winner, if you will, is actually Microsoft with the Xbox 360 selling 202.9K units, meaning they’re only down 0.93 percent from last year’s July.
Sony has hit back at the NPD doom and gloom with… a spreadsheet, and a quick one at that. This chart of amazing facts compares the PS3 with the Xbox 360 Arcade and Wii, and Sony have judiciously come to the conclusion that…
”When you compare all the features against other industry offerings, there is no doubt that the PlayStation 3 provides the most complete entertainment system on the market today – right out of the box.”
”Not only are consumers provided a best-in-class Blu-ray player that comes with 80 GB of storage for photos and music, built-in Wi Fi, and thousands of innovative games that appeal to hardcore gamers and families alike, the PS3 offers future-proof technology and free access to rich and ever-evolving PlayStation Network content and services,” continued Sony’s boast.
During this little informative press release, not a single NPD figure was mentioned. Not a one, or in the case of NPD July 2009, not a negative one.
”Hardware sales have slowed considerably on nearly every platform,” notes NPD analyst Anita Frazier, reports Kotaku. ”The Xbox 360 is the only console system showing a unit sales increase year-to-date, while the NDS has the highest sales of all hardware platforms both for the month, and year-to-date.” Shhh, don’t mention that to Sony.
See below for the chart of amazing facts from Sony Corp.
Source: VG247
