How have PS3 sales really fared since the price drop? Should we be concerned with low software sales on Wii? Can Xbox 360 leverage its head-start with a mid-year price cut? Don't miss Next-Gen's must-read, in-depth, staturated, NPD analysis...

There are multiple storylines to follow in the February 2008 videogame market sales figures reported on Thursday by the NPD Group. The Wii continues its runaway sales streak while the Xbox 360 suffers under production constraints and the PlayStation 3 attempts to turn the corner. Software sales were up significantly, evidence of the market's shifting focus from the hardware platforms to the games people play on those systems.

Today you'll get the broad storylines, but also the details underneath. Yes, the PlayStation 3 is selling reasonably well, but just how well was the $400 model selling relative to the more expensive model? Given last year's concerns about Wii software sales, how well is the system pushing software now, compared to the Xbox 360 and PS3? Is the Xbox 360 going to get a price drop or new hardware models?

Hardware Sales

To set the stage for the more detailed graphs later, here are the system sales for February 2008, according to the NPD Group's figures:



Overall, February was a strong month for system sales, more like the kind of numbers one might expect to see in October than in the middle of the first quarter of the year. Now, let's put these numbers in context by comparing to system sales in the previous 12 months.

In this graph we'll see console sales as a weekly rate. Remember that the retail calendar uses 4 weeks in some months and 5 weeks in others, so the weekly rate smooths out that inequity among the months.



Clearly Wii sales in February 2008 have returned to the same impressive level Nintendo had achieved in the July to August timeframe last year, around 108,000 systems per week. That's good news, because it means that they are now supplying hardware to the market to meet at least as much demand as they were experiencing before the holidays. Given that Wii systems are still difficult to find on store shelves, Nintendo has fixed the shortage problems of January 2008 but not the wider supply problem of the past year. Until the Wii can be found on store shelves as regularly as other systems, we won't know just how high Wii sales can go.