The Wall Street Journal and Reuters have interesting articles today describing early holiday sales of video games. Some facts and figures...
Hardware sales (November 2007, US only)
The best selling video game devices, in order, were:
1. Nintendo DS - 1.5 million units, up from 458,000 in October
2. Nintendo Wii - 981,000 units, up from 519,000
3. Microsoft Xbox 360 - 770,000 units, up from 366,000
4. Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) - 567,000 units
5. Sony PlayStation 3 - 466,000 units, up from 121,000
Clearly, the PS3 price cut made a difference (the low-end model dropped from $499 to $399 in the month, though it also lost some features. That said, it wasn't enough to take the device out of last place.
Software sales
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for Xbox 360 - 2+ million units in November, US only
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock - 1.9 million units, various platforms (3.3 million sold overall; Rock Band tanked, meanwhile)
Assassin's Creed - 1.36 million units, Xbox 360 and PS3
Super Mario Galaxy for Wii - 1.12 million units
Mass Effect for Xbox 360 - 473,000 units
Halo 3 for Xbox 360 - 387,000 units
Xbox 360
Consumers spent $763 million on Xbox 360 hardware, games and accessories, about 30 percent of the month's total take. Four of the top 10 games run on the Xbox 360.
Overall industry health
Video game software sales in the US totaled $1.3 billion for November, up 62 percent from last year. Hardware sales jumped 52 percent. Overall, the US video game market was worth $2.63 billion for the month, up from $1.74 a year earlier.