NPD: Nintendo Maintains Blistering Pace, Sony Doubles Hardware Sales

June's 2008 NPD numbers are in, and while news that Wii and DS sales continue to cruise the stratosphere should only astonish rock-dwellers, the arrival of stealth-action game Metal Gear Solid 4 drove Sony's PlayStation 3 to impressively double its May sales figures.

In one of its biggest monthly sales leaps since debuting in November 2006, Sony's PlayStation 3 roared ahead of the Xbox 360, selling through 406,000 units bolstered by sales of 775,000 copies of Konami's broodingly postmodern Metal Gear Solid 4 -- even more impressive considering MGS4 actually debuted mid-last-month. Add in bundle sales of the 80GB Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3 and MGS4's total tally rises to nearly one million units.

"Platform-exclusive content usually fuels hardware system purchases, and PS3 sales certainly reflect the impact of Metal Gear Solid 4," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier, adding that "PS3 unit sales were the highest of any month outside of that recorded during previous November/December holiday timeframes."

And then you have Nintendo, a veritable force of nature, continuing to shatter industry and pundit "novelty" prognostications. While the Wii dropped negligibly from 675k unit sales in may to 667k in June, the DS jumped an incredible 42 percent, from 453k unit sales in May to 783k in June on strong sales of Vicarious Visions' Guitar Hero: On Tour.

"The Wii has taken the lead in total sales of current generation console hardware at 10.9 million units sold at retail life-to-date in the U.S.," said Frazier of the Wii's recent . Finding something positive to add about the Xbox 360 -- up 15% over its May numbers -- by noting the platform's driven "just under 8 software units purchased for each unit of hardware, on average." Microsoft's still beating the pants off both Nintendo and Sony when it comes to software attach rates, i.e. "where it counts," in other words.

The numbers...

Hardware

783k - Nintendo DS
667k - Wii
406k - PlayStation 3
337k - PlayStation Portable
220k - Xbox 360
189k - PlayStation 2

Software

775k - Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3)
422k - Guitar Hero: On Tour (DS)
373k - Ninja Gaiden 2 (360)
373k - Wii Fit (Wii)
359k - Wii Play (Wii)
347k - Battlefield: Bad Company (360)
322k - Mario Kart (Wii)
295k - LEGO Indiana Jones (Wii)
268k - LEGO Indiana Jones (DS)
260k - LEGO Indiana Jones (PS2)

Frazier on the industry as a whole...

The video games industry continues to perform in the face of an ever-increasingly difficult economic environment as many turn to more in-home entertainment. Even if growth slows over the back half of 2008, the industry is poised to achieve record-breaking revenues of over $22B for the year.

Looking at historical data, hardware price reductions have been a good incentive for a broader consumer base to invest in a new-gen system, which encourages continued industry growth across all categories.

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