With another month, comes another set of industry sales numbers from the NPD reporting group. Although the January sales numbers are no where near as impressive as the November and December figures, I think that they are important to include because of the residual spending from the holiday season by including ‘the gift card factor.’
While there is a lot of information to be gleaned from the sales data across the holiday season, in short, Modern Warfare 2 and New Super Mario Brothers Wii were the big winners. Both games put up huge (And I mean HUGE) numbers from November to January, but going into the Holiday season, Reggie Fils-Aime (President of Nintendo of America) ‘Put the Stake in the Ground,’ on a Gametrailers TV interview with host Geoff Keighley, by stating that New Super Mario Brothers Wii would sell more units then Modern Warfare 2 on the 360. So, far be it from me to call Reggie a liar, and despite stellar sales, New Super Mario Brothers Wii came up just short by selling 4,866,700 units in the US, sandwiched between the 360 and PS3 versions of Modern Warfare 2, which sold 6,156,700 and 3,249,000 units respectively. Note: Click on Images to Enlarge Graphs.
No matter which way you slice it, New Super Mario Brother Wii came up just short of beating the 360 version of Modern Warfare 2 in the United States. The key to the previous sentence was the ‘in the United States’ bit, because despite listening to the Gametrailers TV interview many times, it is unclear whether this bet was simply about the US totals or if it included worldwide sales as well. For the sake of argument, lets take a look at how both titles did across each territory* (Japan, PAL, US).
*Note: Japanese totals for NSMB Wii taken from Mediacrate, while the rest had to be taken from VGChartz.com.
Now that we have a better picture of sales totals across the world for both titles, and accounting for Modern Warfare 2’s poor performance in Mario’s homeland, things have gotten a bit more interesting. So is Reggie a Liar? Did New Super Mario Brothers Wii manage to sell more copies then Modern Warfare 2 on the 360 across all territories? The numbers don’t lie: Take a look.
Ok, so I have managed to post 5 graphs which besides showing that I know my way around an Excel spreadsheet, also show that if you account for world wide sales, Reggie is a liar no more! Although, as you can see, Modern Warfare 2 did beat out New Super Mario Brothers Wii by over 4.5 million units worldwide (Without accounting for the PC version of the game).
Ultimately, the real story concerning both of these titles in the long run could be their ability (or lack there of) to continue strong sales through 2010. Nintendo games (Especially First Party Nintendo Wii and DS Games) traditionally have longer legs then most other titles (Mario Kart Wii sold 1.5 million copies over the November-January 2010 Sales period despite having come out in April of 08), but Modern Warfare 2’s online integration could garner consistent numbers.
As well as the big holiday releases there are a few things to note from the January sales data, so here’s the complete numbers from the first month of 2010 for your statistic pleasure:
01. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) – 656,700
02. Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360) – 572,100
03. Wii Fit Plus (Wii) – 555,700
04. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) – 326,700
05. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) – 310,900
06. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) – 297,600
07. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3) – 259,000
08. Army of Two: The 40th Day (Xbox 360) – 246,500
09. Just Dance (Wii) – 191,900
10. Darksiders (Xbox 360) – 171,200
There are a couple things to note when you look at these numbers.
-No Wii Play in the Top Ten? Did Nintendo finally succeed in selling it to every Wii-Owner in America?
-I wish there was some way to distinguish the $20 Wii Fit Plus software from the $99 bundle with the balance board included. 555,000 copies of a 20 dollar game doesn’t quite bring in the dough like a 99 dollar bundle, although the development cost for Wii Fit Plus had to have been miniscule, so it is probably a money maker at any price.
-It’s good to see Darksiders crack the top ten, but where is Bayonetta? According to VGChartz.com over the first three weeks of sales the PS3 version sold a respectable 103,660 copies with the 360 version racking up another 176,994 copies, which when combined are still less then Mario Kart Wii. Over the same period VGChartz.com has Darksiders selling 486,000 copies between the 360 and PS3 versions, so there are some discrepancies between the VG Chartz numbers and the official NPD numbers.
-Hooray for advertising, it looks like EA, with only half a month to sell, put up solid numbers for Army of Two: The 40th Day based purely on a CG trailer that showed no actual gameplay! If that game looked or played anything like it’s trailer I would have been lined up for a Day 1 Purchase!
-Also can any British readers care to enlighten me about the joys of Ubisoft’s Just Dance, which as well as cracking the top ten in the US, is selling extremely well in the UK. Will a game sell a million copies in the UK just for including two Damon Albarn Songs?
Sharing: It’s Win/Win
