Nintendo the big winner, PS3 dead last for the first half of 2007

The NPD Group has released its monthly console sales numbers for June. These are important not only because the console war is a guerrilla activity with month-by-month sales being an important way to gauge consumer interest, but because with June's numbers, we can now look at the first half of the year and see who is doing well in moving hardware and who is falling behind.

The good news is that people are spending money on gaming: spending on games for June from last year is up 31 percent. If you look at year to date numbers, total spending in 2007 is $6.10 billion, up a staggering 43 percent from 2006's $4.25 billion. Spending on hardware comes to $2.3 billion, which is a 71 percent gain from last year's June total of $1.37 billion. Software is likewise up 24 percent for consoles and 35 percent for portables from last year. People are buying games, but more importantly, they're buying systems.

Data source: NPD Group

Which systems are they buying? We've put together the sales totals for the last four months, and while there is some variance, everyone seems to have settled into a nicely worn rut. The DS and Wii are obvious stunners when it comes to units shifted, with the PS2 still a strong seller. The PSP is also doing well and is the only system that has been moving upwards as times goes on. The newly redesigned system will likely increase sales. While Nintendo is clearly the king of portables, that shouldn't take away from the fact that Sony seems to have a nicely viable system that has cleared out its own corner of the portable market. The PlayStation 3 is showing some truly dismal numbers, but we'll hold off judgement of the system's fate until next month, when we see the fruits of Sony's supposed price drop. 

Data source: NPD Group

The overall sales information for the first half of the year shows no one coming close to dethroning the DS's 2.68 million consoles moved, an amazing achievement for a portable. The second place winner is the Nintendo Wii, which handily defeats every other system being tracked. Snarky commentators may note that we still don't have a "next-generation" system that outsells the PS2, but I'll leave that argument alone.

The PS2 is going strong with 1.52 million units sold in the first six months of the year, but Sony needs to start converting those gamers to PlayStation 3 buyers. The PS3 didn't even come close to selling a million units in the first half of the year (it moved 763,000 units). The 360, true to form, is selling at a mediocre pace, and with a $1 billion+ loss due to design flaws and red ring of death issues, sales could be in a more precarious place than Microsoft would like to admit. The company will release a new Halo 3 edition in the coming months, but with consumers unsure of product quality, gamers may prove a little gun-shy when it comes to buying 360 hardware. 

Looking at software sales, Nintendo isn't only selling gamers on hardware. They're also making sure people are feeding their Wiis and DS systems with Nintendo games. Out of the top 20 games sold in June, Nintendo holds nine slots, including the top four positions. Year to date? Nintendo has a staggering six of the 10 top slots, including the top three. In other words, Nintendo's domination of the field doesn't end with systems: they are getting gamers to spend money on software as well, most of which are first-party games. The PS2 has two slots in the top ten games for the first half of the year with Guitar Hero 2 and God of War 2, and the 360 had one game on the year-to-date bestseller list: Crackdown. The PS3 has no games in the top twenty list for June, nor the top ten for the first half of the year. 

Clearly the only big winner for 2007 so far is Nintendo. Sony has yet to sell the PlayStation 3 hardware in any numbers and is instead leaning on its successful PS2 and PSP business to see it through, a strategy with a relatively short half-life. The 360 doesn't look so hot with middling sales numbers, a very public black eye with the red ring of death issue, and the loss of one of the most public faces of the business, Peter Moore. While overall sales are up, the market is at a very uneven place right now, and it's unclear if consumers are spending these huge amounts on the gaming industry in general, or simply on Nintendo. We look forward to seeing forward movement from the PlayStation in July.