It is that time of year when console war competitors begin issuing press releases letting us know how well they did over the holiday season. Both Sony and Nintendo have already done so, with statements that contain enough numbers to have a team of statisticians working until Easter. Microsoft has, for the time being, kept eerily quiet on the Christmas season fortunes of its XBox console but expect a grandiose statement as soon as the PR team is done "working" the numbers.
The most impressive but not necessarily significant figure to come out of the Sony camp is that PS2 reached the 70 million units shipped mark. The breakdown of those units by territory is as follows :
Japan (including Asia) 16.18 million units (launch date: March 4, 2000)
North America 29.26 million units (launch date: October 26, 2000)
Europe/PAL 24.56 million units (launch date: November 24, 2000)
SCEA's user base grew by close to three million additional PlayStation 2 hardware units during the key holiday selling season. Specifically, Sony Computer Entertainment America sold more than 500,000 PlayStation 2 computer entertainment systems in November and more than 2 million additional units during December. More than 31 per cent of PlayStation 2 hardware sales came as a result of the newly introduced PlayStation 2 Combo Pack [includes the PlayStation 2 console, Network Adaptor (Ethernet/modem) and a copy of the online-enabled game, ATV Offroad Fury 2] at a USD 199 suggested retail price. These figures helped propel the North America PlayStation 2 installed base to more than 24.5 million units in 38 months on the market. Nintendo's GameCube has sold 6.8 million units in the U.S. since its 2001 launch.
It is impossible to compare Sony's sales to Nintendo's because the GameCube manufacturer chose to comment on the console's holiday sales by comparing 2003 to 2002 rather than using actual sales figures. So Nintendo decided to compare define their seasonal success by comparing themselves to... well themselves even though we all know that 2002 GC sales in the U.S. at least, can only be described as dismal. They do however, claim to have bumped Microsoft's Xbox to the No. 3 position in the 2003 console wars.
Global holiday sales for Nintendo GameCube in 2003 outpaced 2002 by 70 per cent and Nintendo does not plan to change its global sales target of 6 million Nintendo GameCube systems this fiscal year. The company estimates that for 2003, GameCube U.S. hardware sales increased by more than 35 per cent over 2002; Sony's PlayStation 2 dropped by about 25 per cent and Xbox showed no relevant market growth. In December alone, Nintendo GameCube hardware sales soared 69 per cent over December 2002, compared to a drop of about 30 per cent for PlayStation 2. Again, Xbox showed little change. Impressive though they are, these figures offer little insight into which console actually sold more units over the holidays.
GameCube U.S. sales got a boost from a Sept. 25 price drop, which brought Nintendo's console to an MSRP of USD 99.99. Pushed on by the holiday season, Mario Kart : Double Dash!! has become the fastest-selling Nintendo GameCube game in the United States, with more than 1 million units in just seven weeks.
What is even more surprising is that seemingly outdated consoles continued to sell well over the holiday season. In its ninth holiday season on the market, the original PlayStation game console reached sales of nearly 600,000 units in November and December. Fueled by the PS one price of USD 49 and the more than 1,400 budget games available, PS One has seen its lifecycle extended beyond the assumed five-year period. With an installed base of 37 million, a PlayStation or PS one console can be found in more than one out of every three U.S. households.
Similarly, Nintendo's hand-held Game Boy Advance also saw double-digit increases in the United States, with nearly 2.5 million units sold in December, (notice the triumphant return of actual sales figures) an 11 per cent increase over December 2002. Nintendo sold more than 8.2 million Game Boy Advance systems in 2003, an increase of 18 per cent over 2002 and the most sold in one calendar year in the 14-year history of the Game Boy. In 2003, the Game Boy Advance outsold PlayStation 2 by nearly 2 million units.
The 2003 sales for Nintendo GameCube software increased 63 per cent (return to percentages) over 2002, while Xbox software increased 54 per cent and PlayStation 2 software increased 23 per cent. Nintendo plans to improve on these figures by maintaining a steady flow of strong software titles, including Final Fantasy : Crystal Chronicles in February and Pokemon Colosseum in March.
Sony claimed that total first party PlayStation 2 software sales increased in November and December, up 129 per cent (Sony using percentages now too...) from the two months prior, and up four per cent versus the same timeframe one year ago, through key titles such as SOCOM II: U.S. Navy SEALs, Jak II, Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando and EyeToy. Overall first party sales volume for the holidays, which includes front-line software and Greatest Hits titles for both PlayStation and PlayStation 2, achieved close to the five million-unit mark. The 5 million mark reached could be misleading as PS one titles are cheap and the company did claim that 37 million units are installed in the U.S. Since Sony do not provide a breakdown of title sales, isolating the figure for the PS2, it is hard to extract any useful conclusion from that 5 million figure.
