The Nintendo Wii has sold over 8 million consoles in Japan alone, according to unofficial figures released by the influential Famitsu Magazine. Those spectacular sales figures haven’t stopped a senior Sony figure saying that the Nintendo Wii is only played occasionally by most owners.
Tagged ‘console wars’
The Nintendo Wii outsold its nearest competitor, the Microsoft Xbox 360, by nearly 2:1 in March in the US, NPD figures show. The Nintendo Wii sold over 600,000 units to US gamers. Microsoft sold 330,000 Xbox 360s. And Sony sold a mere 218,000 PS3s. Nintendo’s also trouncing Sony when it comes to handheld console sales too.
Sony’s head of hardware marketing, John Koller, has served Microsoft a verbal battery, accusing the rival console maker of writing cheques to cover up its lack of confidence in its first-party game line-up. Koller‘s reasoning is that Microsoft pays out for exclusives like The Lost and Damned because it doesn’t feel its own games can cut the mustard.
Killzone 2 has pipped Halo Wars to take top spot in the UK games chart and has become the second fastest selling UK title in the console’s history, according to Chart Track. Microsoft’s vaunted Halo franchise couldn’t keep PS3’s long-awaited exclusive from the number one position, which dislodged Street Fighter IV from the lead, pushing the PS3 version down to sixth place.
Xbox 360 is leading the PS3 in Europe, according to Microsoft – and it reckons it has the figures to prove it. The data comes from GfK Chart-Track, which estimates the Xbox 360 has sold approximately one million units more than PS3, and stands at odds with the claims Sony was making in May last year.
According to GfK Chart-Track data, the PlayStation 3 is still trailing the Xbox 360 by one million units in Europe. While the console was steadily closing the gap with arch-rival Xbox 360 at the start of the year, Microsoft’s decision to slash prices in September and Sony’s unwillingness (or inability) to follow suit, widened the gap. With £99 Xbox 360 Arcade deals floating around right now, it looks highly likely that Microsoft will own this Christmas. If you ignore Nintendo, that is.
Just when you thought the fanboys were beginning to put down their weapons and call it a draw (in a console war, there are never any winners and the first casualty is truth etc.), Capcom have reignited the smouldering remains of the conflict with the announcement of different Limited Edition versions of its 2009 mega-title Resident Evil 5 for the Xbox 360 and PS3.
Microsoft has announced sales figures in Japan, Europe and the US showing a surge in sales of its Xbox 360 console. In America, Microsoft has announced that on “Black Friday” (the first shopping day after Thanksgiving, and traditionally a big sales day in the US) its Xbox 360 console outsold the Sony PS3 three-to-one.