November Hardware Numbers
November is one of the busiest times of the year for gamers. An influx of new releases guarantee that there are plenty of games to put on holiday wishlists, thus plenty of parents, kids and gamers alike to buy them. Likewise, there are plenty of consumers willing to pick up both new and old hardware, as the numbers below show.
Game Boy Advance (includes SP, Micro) 900,000
PlayStation 2 550,000
Nintendo DS 380,000
Sony PSP 360,000
Xbox 360 300,000
GameCube 275,000
Xbox 190,000
The latest North American figures from NPD are no doubt interesting. Game Boy Advance sold nearly one million units throughout the month of November, making it the most-selling video game handheld and video game piece of hardware for the month. Next-up, PlayStation 2 sold a solid 550,000, selling the most of all home consoles.
Meanwhile, Nintendo DS sold more than Sony PSP by around 20,000 units, with Nintendo DS selling around 380,000 and Sony PSP selling 360,000. November was a heated month for both handhelds as Nintendo DS saw the release of its flagship title, Mario Kart DS, while PSP enjoyed the release of its killer-app, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories.
Xbox 360 launched in November selling through all of its launch units 300,000 of them. GameCube followed 360 closely, selling 275,000 units. And, finally, Xbox sold 190,000 units. November marks the first month in a while for GameCube to outsell Xbox. However, it should be noted that Xboxs declining numbers are due to the Xbox 360 launch in November.
The total hardware sales for the month at 2,955,000. In comparison, November 2004 saw well over 3 million hardware units sold between Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube and Nintendo DS.
While sales for November are always impressive, December traditionally sees the most hardware sales, thus we expect the same to be true this year.
The numbers in this report apply to North America only. NPD has also said that these numbers are not totally accurate, and it will provide a more precise list in the weeks to come.
