Flay

CSFB Interactive Entertainment
Weekly Sales Report 12/30 - 1/5

Summary

Though US sales of video games declined by more than 50% in the week after Christmas, sales increased an estimated 72% versus the same period last year. We project that Microsoft sold 64,000 Xbox hardware units in its eighth week for a total U.S. install base of 1.42 million. Approximately 4.6 million Xbox software units were sold during that time period, for a tie-ratio of 3.2. At CES on Monday, Microsoft announced that they had sold 1.5 million units in North America with the tie ratio of greater than 3 through the end of the year.

Nintendo sold 35,000 GameCube units during the week to bring the install base to 1.33 million units. Sony sold 136,000 PS2 units in the week, bringing the install base in the U.S. to over 7 million units. Game Boy Advance sold 68,000 units last week, bringing the install base to over 4.9 million units.

Take-Two's (TTWO, $18.76, Buy) Grand Theft Auto 3 for the PS2 topped the charts once again, selling approximately 221,000 units in its eleventh full week for a total of over 2 million since launch. Max Payne for the Xbox and the PS2 were the #5 and #7 overall video games during the week. To date in the company's
January quarter US sales of PC and video game products have risen over 450% according to our analysis of the NPD Group's sales reports.

Electronic Arts' (ERTS, $54.50, Strong Buy) U.S. sales of video game products for the first week of January have risen 67% over the same period last year. The strength has been across almost every product and platform, with Harry Potter, Bond, and Madden leading the way.

For those of you that wanted to know, there ya go.

(Waits for the obligatory response "Play the games and don't worry about sales numbers.")

ipkevin

Is it normal to have the existing popular system outsell the new system during the first year? (With consideration to the existing system (PS2) still being in the same generation of course)

mr.snowmizer

Very.

People seem to forget that graphing out sales of any successful system would show a bell-shaped curve. It would take a very unusual circumstance for a successful system's second year numbers to trail a newcomer's first year.

darkside

I still think Nintendo is hurting themselves by not getting any hardware on store shelves. I see PS2s and Xboxes in stock everywhere, but I haven't seen a Game Cube since December.

Is Max Payne that good? More importantly is the PS2 version worth getting or should I just wait until someday when I have an Xbox? I thought I read the PS2 version was not very good.

Grimfarrow

Get the PC version. This way, you can also download all the excellent mods out there.

darkside

I keep forgetting I have that option. I thought this PC thing was just for posting to DVD Talk.

gcribbs

what were the software sales numbers for the PS2, PS1 and the GC?