Find out who the big winners were this Thanksgiving
Did somebody say recession? VG Chartz presents an early look at hardware and software sales from Thanksgiving week, traditionally the start of the holiday season in the US and home to black friday - the biggest single retail day of the year. Note that these figures represent early estimates based on only a small sample of data - the finalised figures will be released in the next few days.
As expected, the big winner during last week was Nintendo. According to our early estimates,
over 1.6 million Wii and DS units were sold last week in the Americas (with around a 50:50 split), eclipsing the 1 million units of Nintendo hardware sold during the same period last year. This represents around $300 million in sales with a similar amount grossed for software. Top software performers were Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii, Guitar Hero: World Tour, Rock Band, Wii Music and Nerf-N-Strike.
Microsoft will also be pleased with their performance last week, nearly
half a million Xbox360s were sold with around half of those being the $199 Arcade SKU. Strong software performers were Call of Duty: World at War, Gears of War 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2.
Last but by no means least, Sony saw some good increases for black friday with
PS3 and PS2 selling around 200,000 units of hardware each and PSP managing to move slightly more. Strong software performers were LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, Call of Duty: World at War and Guitar Hero: World Tour.
So overall that is around 2.7 million units of hardware sold compared to just over 2 million for Thanksgiving week last year.
It seems that price is king in 2008 and with the current financial situation the big winners for the holidays will be Wii, DS and Xbox360 Arcade - assuming of course that manufacturers can cope with demand!
Stay tuned for more news and finalised figures when we have them.