Hardware Sales

During May 2008, the Nintendo Wii continued to dominate hardware sales, selling at nearly three times the rate of either of its two main competitors. Nintendo sold nearly 170,000 systems per week, a 5.6% drop from the rate in April. Sony's PlayStation 3 was a distant second at just over 52,000 systems per week (up 11.5% from April) and Microsoft's Xbox 360 maintained its April rate at around 47,000 systems per week.


In its materials to the press Sony noted that its year-on-year PlayStation 3 sales were up nearly 155% over last year. Technically, this is true but that number deserves to be evaluated in the proper context: in May 2007, the PlayStation 3 was selling as well as the Game Boy Advance, and well behind the Xbox 360 and Wii. In fact, during May 2007 the Nintendo Wii sold 338,000 systems (more than four times the number of PlayStation 3 systems sold that month) and yet its sales were up 100% year-on-year in May 2008.

Xbox 360 sales were up 20 percent year-on-year, but even that figure deserves further explanation: May 2007 was the weakest month for that system in all of 2007. Likewise May 2008 is the weakest month for the Xbox 360 year-to-date.

With the fortunes of Sony's PlayStation Portable apparently waning and the Nintendo DS receiving less attention than the Nintendo Wii, the handheld market is mostly in a holding pattern. Hardware sales in this segment vary little and the ratio between Nintendo DS and PSP sales remains constant, for the most part.



Nintendo sold 113,000 DS systems per week in May, up 9% from last month and 7% from the same period in 2007. The PSP continued it slow decline, which began in March, and only sold 45,580 systems per week, down 17% year-on-year.

The oldest console still being actively sold, the PlayStation 2, is showing a significant slowing in sales. Compared to the same month last year, PS2 sales are down almost 30%, and its year-to-date sale are down over 13% from the same five month period in 2007.