What did Black Friday do for Nintendo and its competitors?
Hardware
Nintendo DS – 1,500,000
Xbox 360 – 1,370,000
Wii – 1,270,000
PS3 – 530,000
Software
1. Call of Duty: Black Ops, 8,400,000*
2. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, 1,140,000*
3. Just Dance 2
4. Madden NFL 11
5. Fable III*
6. Donkey Kong Country Returns, 430,500
7. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, 417,000
8. Gran Turismo 5, 400,000*
9. NBA 2K11
10. Wii Fit Plus*
*Include all versions of this game, except those bundled with consoles.
The number on the right indicates units sold. Sales numbers come from Bloomberg, GamesIndustry.biz, NeoGAF, NintendoEverything, and USA Today.
As expected, Black Ops exploded all over and made enormous sales; reports indicate that the game moved 7 million copies in 24 hours, a new world record. Brotherhood also did impressively, which isn’t much of a surprise. I am pleasantly surprised, however, with the great performance of Donkey Kong Country Returns, which managed to outsell even Gran Turismo 5 in this country, though the latter has always been more popular in Europe.
A more interesting comparison is the Kinect vs. the Wii. Half of all Xbox’s sold in November were bundled with the Kinect, which contributed to a 68% sales increase over last year; it still only barely managed to edge out the Wii, however, which mostly saw a repeat of last year’s performance, which should put to rest some naysayers who say the console is dying. Nevertheless, 50% of all money spent on games this month went toward something for the Xbox, which definitely says something.
Here are some more numbers:
- Dance Central, the high-profile Kinect title from Rock Band creators Harmonix, turned up in the #11 spot for software. The music/dance genre is enjoying a 38% sales increase.
- Kinect bundles outsold Move bundles by a factor of 5 to 1.
- The uDraw tablet peripheral for the Wii sold 190,000 units this month, even with its supply constrained, according to Gamespot.
- The Kinect is currently the best-selling peripheral for the entire year.
