Nintendo Continues to Dominate Console Hardware and Software Sales

Back in December, we posted about Nintendo’s impressive showing this past November. Despite the fact that the economy has been in better shape, both Nintendo and companies like Apple continue to thrive, and it looks like that’s not going to change for a while. According to NPD reports, although video game sales (including consoles) continued to fall in January, Nintendo easily remains the leader, both in hardware and software.

The Wii was the leading console, no surprise, selling 679,200 units, while the Nintendo DS came in second, with 510,800 units. I can’t help but be continually impressed by numbers like these. Both the Wii and DS have been out for a while, but despite that, they still sell an insane number of units each month. The Wii came out in fall of 2006, well over two years ago, and it can still manage to sell close to 700,000 units in a single month. That’s impressive.

By comparison, Microsoft came in third from a console standpoint, with their Xbox 360, which sold 309,000 units. Sony’s products took fourth, fifth and sixth place, with the PS3 selling 203,200, the PSP selling 172,300 and the PlayStation 2 (yes, it’s still sold) selling 101,200. Even that number is impressive, given the original PS2 launched in 2000!

Nintendo games topped the software sales charts as well. First place went to the Nintendo Wii Fit with 777,000 units sold. Wii Play placed second with 415,000 units sold and Mario Kart Wii was third with 292,000 units sold. Gamasutra’s Matt Matthews thoroughly analyzed the January numbers declaring Nintendo platforms made up 52% of all industry sales which is up from 33% when compared to the same time last year.