Wii on Top for Third Straight Month

LOS ANGELES - You might say this is the classic David and Goliath underdog story, and you would be right.

And why is that, you ask? Because after being in a sales funk over the last decade, even with the claim to reinvigorating the videogame market after the industry's notorious 1980's drop-dead crash, the oldest videogame company still making its own hardware is once again fighting it's way back to the top three times over in a move not seen since the days of Super NES vs. Genesis (or Famicon 16-bit vs. MegaDrive, in the case of our Japanese counterparts).

Reuters has reported on Thursday evening that Nintendo (JP: 7974)(Pink Sheets: NTDOY) has taken the sales lead for March with 259,000 units in the United States. That's 60,000 more than Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Xbox 360 at 199,000 units sold, and 129,000 more than Sony's (JP: 6758)(NYSE:SNE) paltry sales rate of 130,000 units for the PlayStation 3 (PS3). The two higher-end consoles each cost about $400 and $600, respectively

Sales rates in the handheld market followed a similar tack, with Nintendo's DS moving 508,000 units for the month. Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP), despite a $30 price cut to about $170 sold only 180,000 units. Income rates for portable game hardware sales increased by about one-third to $114 million, while their counterparts in the console sector nearly doubled in March to hit $257 million.

Overall, total game sales income rates were up by ablout 15 percent for a total of $574 million. All sales data and other figures were reported by market analysis firm NPD.

The latest sales data continues trends begun in January. In that month, Nintendo's Wii took the lead in sales for the first time in years for any previous Nintendo console, selling about about 435,503 units By comparison, the 360 sold 294,000 units, while the PS3 came in third for next-gen hardware at 243,554... and was still outsold by the older PlayStation 2 at 299,352 units!

The brigade continued onward into February, when the Wii and DS platforms remained the top console and handheld videogame platforms with per-unit sales figures of 335,000 and 485,000, respectively. The retiring GameCube platform, meanwhile, sold just 24,000 as fans of Nintendo's bigest franchises begin to shift to the Wii, while the Game Boy Advance added an additional 136,000 units for Nintendo. Ironically, both of Nintendo's older videogame players pegged their last available monthly sales figures during February - although they did contribute to a total of about 54 percent of total videogame hardware sales, all generated by Nintendo platforms.

Also during February, ,the 360 sold 228,000 for a decent second place in the next-gen videogame market and forth overall, beaten only by Nintendo and Sony (NYSE: SNE) platforms as the PS2 continued its strong lead of the departing (but not yet out of the building) generation of consoles with per-unit sales of about 295,000 while the original Xbox was barely on the map with only 480 units sold. The PSP sold about 176,000 units and still beat out the faltering PlayStation 3, which by comparison only sold about 127,000 units.

Sony's lagging PS3 sales aren't the only problem affecting the company. Within the past several days, the electronics giant swiftlty discontinued manufacturing the 20GB PS3 for the North American market, and announced pending layoffs in Europe that may also affect other global regions. And although rumors are now circulating that the Japanese twenty-gig may be the next PS3 model on the chopping block, Sony plans to at least make an attempt to keep it going just a little longer under the rising sun.

DISCLAIMER: The author of this article does not own any stock whatsoever, or other fund or depository certificates, receipts and so forth in or related to any of the companies mentioned herein.