This week in the UK Wii sales hit 6 million, the fastest home console to reach this point ever! I don’t think 6 million is a particularly important milestone but what is important is that Wii is still the fastest selling home console up to this point.
Of course PS2 is still the mark by which all other home consoles are measured, so just how does the Wii stack up against Sony’s all conquering machine? Well just look below at the cumulative sales chart I’ve made for you. This shows sales of each machine (Wii in Orange, PS2 in blue) by quarter, since their launch.
Sales start fairly equally but Wii sales soon accelerate beyond all expectations to take a very good lead, indeed by just the 2 year mark the Wii is over 1m sales ahead of the previous best.
All good so far…
However, this year Wii sales have really slowed down. For 2009 sales are as good as 50% down on last year, this has meant that for the past 12 months the gap hasn’t really changed that much, still hovering around the 1m mark.
So 2010 sales for Wii will be key, can the Wii recover and move on towards becoming the best selling UK home console or will sales continue to fall and leave the PS2 on the sales throne for a little longer. Personally I think the Wii will have a hard time getting there, sales momentum is down, the casual crowd seem to be disinterested and the other consoles are gaining traction in the Wii’s marketplace.
What games will be big next year? I’m not too sure yet but from now on I’ll be keeping this page updated with all the critically acclaimed as well as commercially successful titles. Right now it’s just a list but I’ll make it look a lot better as time goes on. Let me know what you think, if I’ve made any mistakes or should be adding more. Red Dead Redemption (above) is currently my most anticipated for next year… What’s yours?
Before the hotly anticipated launch of Modern Warfare 2 we all gasped as Activision CEO Bobby Kotick announced they would be upping the RRP to £54.99, but just how much did we end up paying?
According to MCV, the game grossed £67.4 million in it’s first week on sale, quite incredible I’m sure you’ll agree. With 1.78 million (again incredible!) unit sales of the title just where does this leave our average user? So based on these figures we can calculate the average price of the title with a very simple equation, Revenue/Units Sold = Av. Price, or £67.4/1.78 which gives us the magic figure of £37.87.
So we’re well below the stated RRP, mostly I would put this down to rampant supermarket discounting, online deals and ultimately retailers not wanting to risk low sales by pricing people out of the market. To have a launch week sales total of 1.7m units first you must put the stock into retail, had the game of failed a lot of people would be sitting on a lot of unsold stock – a total disaster!
Of course with years of build up, huge marketing spend and a decent game to boot, no-one would have bet against instant success. Even so I didn’t quite expect the game to sell this well, i had my initial forecast at 1.2m, still a huge and record breaking number, just no where near the games eventual success.
Of course when week ones are huge the only place to go is down, has Modern Warfare 2 burnt through it’s market already or will sales continue to keep it at number 1 and grow the franchise from it’s previous base? Only time will tell, but it’s a damn good start…
