Wii Soars, PS3 bombs, as the industry slows: November sales

It was a good November for Nintendo and Epic/Microsoft Game Studios, but a bad one for the industry, especially Sony and, to lesser extent, the makers of "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band."

The latest sales data from NPD shows overall sales growth was 10%, which in the midst of a recession is pretty good, but is still down a LOT from last year. That shows the videogame biz is hurting, on a comparative basis, just like pretty much every other sector.

NPD points out that this November had seven fewer post-Thanksgiving shopping days than last on its calendar, which is a fair point. But even still, the growth rates are down by such a huge amount that that can't explain the whole difference. Total growth, for instance, plunged from 52% to 10%. Hardware sales growth fell from 41% to 10%, which is somewhat expected since we're now later in the console cycle. But software sales growth plunged from 62% to 11%, which isn't what you'd expect. Seems like software sales should be further increasing now that the console install base is so much bigger.

Without a doubt the company in the most trouble is Sony. Forget about declining growth rates. Playstation 3 sales were actually down 19% in absolute terms from November 2007. Considering that Sony has some very high profile exclusive games out in the past two months, like "LittleBigPlanet" and "Resistance 2," that's downright disastrous. Looks like people just aren't willing to pay $400 for a videogame console right now. (PSP sales were down an even worse 26%, but at least that has the excuse of launching 3.5 years ago, not two).

Also suffering are "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band." 1.5 million "Guitar Hero: World Tour" units have been sold so far this year by Activision, off 55% from "Guitar Hero III" at the same moment in 2007. "Rock Band 2" has sold 809,000 units for MTV and EA. It's tough to compare to last year, since this sequel launched in September, but only for 360, and the original launched last year in late November for 360 and PS3 and added PS2 in December. But consider this: Last November Rock Band sold 382,000 units on its two launch consoles, followed by 463,000 in December for 360 alone, for a total of 845,000. December's always the biggest month, of course, but one week for two consoles and one month for one, compared to a month on one console and a month and a half on two sounds like a more than fair comparison. And "Rock Band 2" is losing to the original.

I'm almost as confused as you are, so here's a cleaner stat: According to UBS analyst Ben Schachter, combined "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" revenue was down 12% in November from last year. And keep in mind that the "Guitar Hero: World Tour" band kit costs $100 more than the highest priced version of "Guitar Hero III."

"Gears of War 2" had a huge month, as expected, though. And "Call of Duty: World at War" launched almost exactly even with "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare," a start that Activision has to be very happy with. The only new original game in the top 10 for November was "Left 4 Dead," which debuted with a strong 410,000 units.

There is one other company I'm forgetting... Oh yea, Nintendo. It seems that recessions don't impact them. I'm not even sure if the law of gravity is in effect at Nintendo HQ. Thanks to more supply and growing demand, Wii sales more than doubled to 2 million last month, the biggest ever for any console outside of December. No doubt Nintendo will break that record next month. Meanwhile, two of its games continue to show what the movie business calls "legs." "Wii Fit" was no. 4 and "Mario Kart" no. 5 six and seven months after their debut, respectively (I'll exclude "Wii Play" because of the free controller issue). Every other new game seems to come and go from the top 10 quickly, but "Fit" and "Mario Kart" keep being snatched up by all those new Wii buyers. Even the much maligned "Wii Music" came back from a weak October launch to sell a solid 297,000 units in its debut.

Notable new games that sold less than that -- though I can't tell by how much and so it's hard to evaluate whether they're bombs or just not quite big enough -- include "Quantum of Solace," "Tomb Raider: Underworld," and "Mortal Kombat vs. DC." There's also "Mirror's Edge," but we already know that one is a bomb.

Here's the complete set of NPD November data. At the suggestion of a smart reader, I've added release dates, so you can fairly compare games that came out earlier or later in the month. I've also added percentage growth from last November for each console, just because I think it's interesting.

Game                      Console     Publisher     Units sold in Nov.  Release date

Gears of War 2         360           Microsoft       1.56 million        Nov. 7

Call of Duty 5            360           Activision      1.41 million       Nov. 10

Wii Play                    Wii           Nintendo        796,000            Feb 12, 2007
Wii Fit                      Wii           Nintendo        697,000            May 19
Mario Kart                Wii            Nintendo        637,000            April 27
Call of Duty 5            PS2           Activision       597,000            Nov. 10
Guitar Hero: WT       Wii           Activision       475,000            Oct. 26
Left 4 Dead              360           EA                  410,000            Nov. 18
Resistance 2            PS3           Sony               435,000             Nov. 4
Wii Music                PS3            Nintendo        297,000            Oct. 20

Console       Nov. unit sales  Growth from Nov. 2007       Lifetime-to-date
Wii              2.04 million                108%                           15.5 million
DS               1.57 million                 3%                              24.6 million
360             836,000                       9%                              12.5 million
PSP             421,000                      -26%                           13.2 million
PS3             378,000                      -19%                            6.1 million

Category             Nov. revenue   Change  Year-to-date revenue  Change
Total industry     $2.91 billion        10%       $16.04 billion             22%
Hardware           $1.21 billion        10%       $5.93 billion               14%
Software            $1.45 billion        11%       $8.21 billion               31%
Accessories        $255 million         7%        $1.91 billion               17%