November NPD Numbers "Exceeded" Sony's Expectations

It seems that fortune is continuing to smile upon the PS3. After Sony's victory at Metacritic's Platform Power Rankings list, the just-released November NPD sales figures have "exceeded expectations" for Jack Tretton, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America.

In November, PS3 was the only hardware console to see any growth when compared to last November, experiencing an 88% lift and a 122% increase from the previous month. Metacritic also unveiled this week its 2009 Game Platform Power Rankings, in which PS3 titles topped the charts on overall game quality, tallying up five of the top ten best reviewed games in 2009 and with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves taking best reviewed game of the year.

Tretton remained optimistic about the future with this comment:

The sheer appetite and interest in the PS3 this holiday has been overwhelming and is exceeding our expectations. So much so, some retailers are expected to experience tight supply this December. There’s no question the holidays are looking very bright for PlayStation and we’re confident that the new year is on pace for the same with hugely anticipated titles hitting the platform, such as MAG, God of War III, BioShock 2, and Final Fantasy XIII.

According to the NPD numbers, there were 710,400 PS3 units sold during November; in comparison, the Xbox 360 managed to accrue 819,500 units sold.

Bloated Black Friday numbers nowithstanding, the individual game sales list is a little more interesting. Uncharted 2 was nowhere near the top in terms of overall sales -- that honor fell to the Xbox 360 version of Modern Warfare 2 with 4.2 million copies sold; the PS3 version only sold 1.87 million copies, beating out the Wii's New Super Mario Bros.' 1.39 million with a difference of 480,000 copies.

Tags: sony, Wii, PlayStation 3, NPD, jack tretton

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Frank Anderson

December 10, 2009

I have to say that these NPDs made me a little less bullish on Sony than I was before. With a new price point that finally has them at an advantage in the price to value area, and Sony winning over the 360 for the last few months, I have to say I expected Sony to beat 360 by a good bit (abt 200,00). I also think the deals on the PS3 were just about as good as the deals on 360 this year, and I am shocked to see the difference is sales of MW2. I did not expect it to have parity between consoles, but I did expect the PS3 version to do at least half what the 360 did. I think if MS can make Natal a 'event' and release a substantial library day 1, then MS might have to momentum to carry second place the whole generation. To be clear though, I do not think these numbers are bad for Sony, and I still think there are a million good things happening for them right now. In the end I do not care too much about console rankings, but at this point it is so ingrained in me that I [i]have[/i] to keep up with them. I think that other than the sales of the PSP, these NPDs were pretty good for everyone involved.

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Keith Schloemer

Frank, totally agree with you on every point. What surprised me most about the NPD numbers was the PS2: 203,000 new units sold in the month of November! That console just keeps on trucking.

Jeffrey Puritz

Frank, you forgot one important item: Walmart had a one day sale on xbox arcade for $100 and Amazon matched that price for that day, as well (although I believe NPD is retail store only) I am sure that this accounted for more than the difference in Xbox vs PS3 sales (having bought one of those arcades..) The mgr. at my local walmart said that they sold over 90 arcades in 3 hours. Not sure how many walmarts there are but that is a very big number.. JP

Jeff Grubb

Low expectations -- the key to any healthy relationship.

@JP I hate to be "that guy," but NPD does not include Walmart or Amazon.

Wow, that is good to know JP! I know there were many places that were doing deals where you got a free PS3 if you bought a PS3 as also. I am trying to convince a friend to take advantage of this, so that we can play GT5 when it launches.

Travis McReynolds

PSP, however, had dismal sales in the last few months. Something like 1 PSP sold for every 5 DS units.

Rob Savillo

Something to think about -- how many Xbox 360s in that 819,500 are repurchases from those who had their console banned?

William Figueroa

December 11, 2009

Spinnin' the sales.... Any way, Rob, if Microsoft planned the ban wave, it might explain it's resurgence in sales despite there being nothing this month to promote it, especially since MW2 was also on the PS3. But I think marketing had a bit of help, not the ban wave.

I'm not suggesting Microsoft "planned the ban wave" -- but it was a major event in November, and one in which Xbox pirates openly admitted to buying a new console.

Rob- I think the sales of MW2 on 360 and PS3 show that there is a pretty good chance the sales of 360s were at least partly affected by the apparent consensus that 360 is the system to play MW2 on. I do not doubt that banned peeps re-buying 360s accounted for some sales, but even with that I would have expected Sony to garner enough new customers to beat the 360 for this month. People have been talking for so long about how they were waiting for the PS3 to get cheap before buying it, and while they have shown up, they have not shown up in quite the numbers I was expecting. Not at all to take away from a year that clearly went to Sony and the PS3. I think it is a godsend that the PS3 is finally on firmer grounding. I guess my concern is that PS3 owners seem to be a bit less rabid game buyers than 360 ones. I am not a fan of this because it hurts the chances of some games coming to the PS3.

December 12, 2009

@JMG Thanks, I did not know that about the NPD numbers, after some googling it seems that they get info on ~60% of retail sales and project the remaining 40% from various sources. Kind of like my local weather :o I guess caveat emptor applies even to the statisticians! JP