October NPD: Wii up, Sony down, Fable 2 raking in the gold

by Ross Miller on Nov 13th 2008 8:00PM

October hardware sales in North America were not good for Sony, with all three of its consoles seeing at least an 18% drop, according to this month's NPD report. The Nintendo Wii maintained its top spot with a 17% increase in sales, likely due to an increase in supply, while Xbox 360's price drop acted as the likely catalyst for its 6.85% increase.

Overall, total sales reached $1.31 billion, an increase of 18%. While accessories dropped 8% to 120.19 million, hardware increased 5% to $494.74m and software sales increased 35% to $696.79m. Fable 2 took the top spot, selling an impressive 790K copies after only ten days of release. Speaking of software, Fallout 3, which we know has moved 4.7 million units worldwide, placed third for the Xbox 360 with 375K.

Not making it into the top ten? Wii Music, which sold a disappointing 81K in its first 11 days of launch. That wouldn't have made the top ten for any NPD report this year.

- Wii: 803K

116K (16.89%)
- DS: 491K

45.8K (-8.53%)
- Xbox 360: 371K

23.8K (6.85%)
- PSP: 193K

45.1K (-18.94%)
- PS3: 190K

42.4K (-18.24%)
- PS2: 136K

37.5K (-21.61%)

Full software sales after the break.

1. Fable II - Xbox 360 – 790K
2. Wii Fit w/ balance board - Wii – 487K
3. Fallout 3 - Xbox 360 – 375K
4. Mario Kart w/ wheel - Wii – 290K
5. Wii Play w/ remote - Wii – 282K
6. Saints Row 2 - Xbox 360 – 270K
7. SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals Confrontation - PS3 – 231K
8. LittleBigPlanet - PS3 – 215K
9. NBA 2K9 - Xbox 360 – 202K
10. Dead Space - Xbox 360 – 193K

Source

Tags: Action, breakingnews, DS, fable, fable-ii, hardwaresales, js-twitter, lionhead, Lionhead-Studios, MGS, Microsoft-Game-Studios, npd, npd-group, PS2, PS3, PSP, RPG, Wii, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (182)

We all know it's on the wrong console, anyway. I wasn't terribly surprised, at least.

Are you back from your vacaation fernando?

And lol at the "just wait until"

Although I suspect it's now "just wait until K2, God of War 3, and FFXIII Versus"

I played lbp the other day and I do not like it at all. The jumping is waaaaaaaaaay to floaty and it takes forever to make a level!
Fable 2 however deserves those sales, it is fantastic and full of stuff to do.

why are people still referring to metacritic.
also it is funny to see how many sony fanboys are on this site. it always seems like they are tying to make the ps3 look better then the xbox 360,wii, and even the ps2. i think they should just give up the ps3 even doing decent because it can not even outsell its predecessor. You guys just need to stop making excuses.

Mario Kart and Wii Fit are friggin' beasts.
I'm not surprised at Wii Fits numbers, but Mario Kart should be over 10 million units by now. It's probably going to outsell GTA4, if it hasn't already.

Reminds me of Mario Kart on the DS, just about the only DS game I can go back to over and over again. Even when online, snakers aren't too common so that to ruin it. These last two iterations really knocked it out of the park for me, and I love the wheel. Turned the game into a real white knuckler for me.

For me, there just wasn't enough to WiiFit where I'd actually consider buying it at all. But sure, I'd bet it'll still sell very well over time.

GTAIV, I'm conflicted on. I enjoyed it, but it also bored me to tears after awhile. I'll snag the DLC whenever it comes out, but it'll probably feel like the Mass Effect DLC at this point, too little, too late.

Ugg... I'm tired of people still whining about snakers. It's part of the game. It's difficult to pull off. Perhaps we should start whining about other advance techniques in other games. Like those darn people who can throw out a fireball with Ryu in Street Fighter II.

I bet Peter Molonyx is emotional right now......790K? Good lord thats impressive seeing how it was only out 2 weeks in October....Congrats....Now Sony your gonna have to get a plan and stick to it...LBP and Socom under performed...I would say just bring out GOW 3 and that would fix everything but since we have to wait a year for that....

LBP is a phenomenal game. I hope it sells out the wazzu. We need more games like it.

THANK JESUS that no one bought Wii Music. Even the casuals are spitting on it...

LBP's target is 2 million by the New Year Gears of War 2 has already hit that shows the power of marketing I haven't seen a single LBP ad

Thats funny, I've seen plenty of LBP ads, more so than GOW2.

[FAIL] stamped :)

I've seen equal distributions of both

I, apparently, have been missing the Wii Music ads. Didn't think there were any until Tmac said there were

Another month, same story!

Wait for HD DVD to fail then it will sell
Wait for Lair then it will sell
Wait for Heavanly Sword then it will sell
Wait for Unchartered then it will sell
Wait for LBP then it will sell
Wait for Home (lol)

Wait, wait, wait. I'm not saying that there are not good/great titles for the system, but all I ever hear is to wait for the next big thing. LBP launch came and went and the system was SMOKED by 360.

I am for one, glad that all three keeping making money. That way I can keep playing great games for all three systems. I have bought all the big name games over the last 6 weeks and my total comes to:
6 on 360(GHWT,GOW2,Fable2,Fallout3,Saints Row,Banjo)
5 on PS3(R2,LBP,MirrorsEdge,ValkyriaChron,Farcry2)
0 on Wii(AC will be the first Wii game in months)
1 on PSP
0 on DS
I love good games without console bias, sorta...
Just be thankful we have 3 consoles to choose from, or you can keep it simple and buy all three. I chose the latter and have owned done that since I have been old enought to have a job.

I bet Molyneux used the Fortune's Tower cheat.

What's more amazing is that Nintendo actually makes money on each console sold; Sony and Microsoft, instead, choose to sold their hardware with a loss, hoping to profit with the software.
Seems Nintendo get the Game and Set of this competition, so far. The match is still up to grabs.

Actually Microsoft are making a profit with the 360 now. Unlikely that it makes up for how much they've had to spend on repairs though.

It always seems to be the most powerful and therefore most expensive consoles lose against the other cheaper consoles, i,e PS1 beat N64, PS2 beat Xbox and now WII beats PS3. The simple reason is that people are and always will be cheapskates, why do the big companys not take this into account the cheaper you can produce and price your console the more it will sell.

It's funny how people defend the ps3 with "OMg it has teh blu rays!!". DVD format isn't going no where people. I don't see people buying blu ray movies over DVD's anytime soon. I sure as hell won't. I don't even buy DVD's at all. It's all about digital content.

blu rays are too expensive...

Blu-Rays are starting to reach DVD prices.

Uhh.. the cost of a blu-ray disc is about twice the amount of a DVD lol.

so when i goto the store to buy a new release movie.
the dvd version is $ 10 - $ 15
the blu ray version is $ 20 - $ 30

that is double the price. or 2 for 1.
with upconverting now, blu ray is better yes, but not exactly worth that much more.
when blu ray movie prices drop, so will DVD prices drop even lower and be half that of blu ray prices.

blu ray is not necessarily the next standard for movie watching. that is only sony's plan.
((remember betamax people, sony held onto betamax for 10 years))
its seems that after the first year of blu ray player sales it is starting to slow down and not that popular.

i stick with my online blockbuster movie pass for blu ray movies.

Out of the above games 1.83 million are MS titles to Sony's .417 million. That means that out of the top ten most popular games MS outsold Sony by 4.39 to 1. That's pretty horrible and while America isn't the only territory it's usually the biggest in terms of sales. This doesn't mean that Sony is doomed but is they really need to do something as the 360 has been able make some headway in Japan. They need to either throw marketing dollars at it, lower the price or my personal preference release some amazing exclusive titles. I think though at this point in the consoles lifespan a lot of people already have a strong biased as to what consoles is the one for them. Even though I only game on 360 and PC I hope they can come through.

yeah i think that america as a country represents approx. 50% or more of microsofts, sonys, and nintendo's worldwide sales...
of course a higher percent going to MS and a lower one to sony and nintendo.
but 1 country america accounts for a huge number overall.
no other country comes close, some regions of the world are close.

People try to say things like "Well worldwide sales is what matters."

Actually.. American sales > Worldwide sales. America makes up.. what? 80% of consumer countries? If it sells well in america, you hardly have to worry about the world.

Not to sound fanboyish.. but I suspect that FFXIII will actually sell more on the 360.. just for the fact that it's now on the console.. and if it sells at LEAST 2:1 on the 360.. I can guarantee you that Versus will go multiplatform. The reason? Since when does Square make exclusives anymore unless they're paid to?

you are probably right.
1) 6 million more 360 owners than ps3 owners today.
that might be 7 million by next year with the price drops and resurgence of 360 console sales. \
2) 360 owners buy more games than ps3 owners. remember people not all ps3 owners are gamers. there are a lot of people that were shopping for a blu ray player last holiday and went with the ps3 for update support and extensive features not found on a normal blu ray player.
23 million 360 owners play games. not all 16 million ps3 owners even play games on the ps3...
3) 360 owners have really started to take a liking for RPG games in general.
4) not 1 cross plat game ( that i know of ) has sold more copies on the ps3 than the 360.

Dude, do you have MSN? Haha

no but my gamertag and PSN id is:
sk8monroe81

playing- fable 2, gears 2, and cod:5

I'm glad to see Fable II in the #1 spot. Although a lot of it seemed copy/pasted from the first game I still enjoyed it. Also it's kind of bad LBP is so low. I was very impressed by the hands-on experience, but whatever I don't own a PS3 so it doesn't make a big difference really.

Previous 50 Comments

October NPD: Wii up, Sony down, Fable 2 raking in the gold

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