Xbox 360 Outsold Wii in February, Says NPD
Microsoft's Xbox 360 outsold Nintendo's Wii in February to claim the top spot in the U.S. monthly sales ranking for the first time in more than two years, analyst group NPD said Thursday. Overall the industry had a poor month with total sales down 15 percent from February last year.
"Honestly, I had expected the industry to perform somewhat better this month," said Anita Frazier, a games analyst at N PD, in a statement.
Total sales for the month including software, hardware and peripherals were US$1.26 billion, with console sales down 20 percent at $426 million.
The Xbox 360 sold 422,000 units during the month compared to the Wii's 397,900 units. The PlayStation 3 sold 360,100 units, which while only good enough for third place represented a 30 percent increase on February 2009. The previous-generation PlayStation 2 managed to sell 101,900 units, NPD said.
In the handheld gaming space Nintendo's DS was once again the top-selling device. It achieved sales of 613,200 units against the PlayStation Portable's 133,400 units.
Those DS sales break the previous record of 597,000 units for portable gaming devices in the U.S., which was set by the DS a month earlier.
The record sales come less than a month before Nintendo is due to launch a new model of the DS, called the DSi XL. The device is already on sale in Japan and will hit U.S. shelves at the end of this month.
"We expect the public's appetite for these systems will grow even more when we introduce our new extra-large model, the Nintendo DSi XL, on March 28," said Cammie Dunaway, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Nintendo of America, in a statement.
Software sales saw a 15 percent drop to $624 million, but higher retail prices helped mask a steeper drop in unit sales.
The top-selling game of the month was Take 2's "Bioshock 2," which sold 750,000 copies across all platforms. The Xbox 360 version outsold the rest at 562,900 units to claim the top spot in the sales ranking. Nintendo's "New Super Mario Bros." came in second with sales of 555,600 units.
Activision's "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" had another strong month with sales of 567,100 units, giving it third place. It has now become the third-best-selling video game of all time, said NPD, with lifetime sales of almost 10 million units.
The top 10 best-selling games in the U.S. in February were, according to NPD Group:
1) Bioshock 2, Xbox 360, 562,900 units
2) New Super Mario Bros., Wii, 555,600 units
3) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Xbox 360, 314,300 units
4) Just Dance, Wii, 275,400 units
5) Wii Sports Resort, Wii, 272,500 units
6) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, PlayStation 3, 252,800 units
7) Mass Effect 2, Xbox 360, 246,500 units
Dante's Inferno: Divine Edition, PlayStation 3, 242,500 units
9) Dante's Inferno, Xbox 360, 224,700 units
10) Heavy Rain, PlayStation 3, 219,300 units
Related information:
The Xbox (name derived from "DirectX box"[4]) is a video game console produced by Microsoft. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market, and competed with Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast, and Nintendo's GameCube. The integrated Xbox Live service allowed players to compete online until April 2010[5].
The Xbox was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe. It is the predecessor to Microsoft's Xbox 360 console. It was discontinued in late 2006, although the final Xbox game (Madden NFL 09) was released in August 2008. Support for out-of-warranty Xbox consoles was discontinued on March 2, 2009; any in-warranty repair now needed will not be undertaken and faulty consoles will replaced with an Xbox 360 instead.
China passenger car sales up 55 pct in February
China's passenger car sales climbed 55 percent from a year earlier in February, despite a long national holiday, on strong demand for smaller cars and sport utility vehicles, an industry group reported Tuesday.
Sales of cars, commercial vehicles and SUVs rose to 942,900 units, while sales of all vehicles including trucks and buses rose 46 percent year-on-year to 1.21 million, according to the government-affiliated China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
Unlike the U.S., China's auto industry does not release monthly sales data adjusted for annual rates. U.S. auto sales rose 13 percent from a year earlier to an annualized rate of 10.4 million, according to Autodata Corp.
Tax cuts and subsidies for small-car purchases pushed demand sharply higher last year, with total vehicle sales leaping 45 percent to 13.6 million, making China the world's biggest auto market, as American car sales languished.
China appears to have kept that lead so far in 2010, though February is traditionally a slow month for auto sales in both markets. The Lunar New Year holiday in mid-February kept China's sales well below the 1.1 million passenger cars sold in January, when sales more than doubled from a year earlier.
Analysts have forecast sales growth to slow this year. Some of the strong growth seen in January was from orders booked late last year, said An Yun, a researcher at Changxin Fund in Shanghai.
"I don't expect sales in 2010 to be as good as last year, though the question is how much slower they will be," An said. "To be fair, we need to watch what happens in the next couple of months."
In January-February, vehicle sales jumped 84 percent year-on-year to 2.87 million, while production rose 92 percent to 2.82 million, the auto industry association said.
A large share of the vehicles sold in China are small passenger cars and minivans used by farming families and small businesses — the focus of the tax cuts and other policies aimed at spurring sales of fuel-efficient vehicles.
In February, automakers sold 623,100 passenger sedans, up 46 percent from the year before. Sales of multipurpose vehicles, mainly vans and minivans, jumped 72 percent to 25,200, while sales of SUVs more than doubled to 70,300, the association said in a report on its Web site.
It said sales of Chinese-brand vehicles continued to advance, claiming about half of sales in February.
All of the foreign automakers face tough competition from the Chinese partners they mentored in joint ventures the government requires as a condition for manufacturing in China.
But Toyota Motor Corp.'s own troubles with recalls of vehicles for braking and gas pedal problems are putting it under even greater pressure to drum up sales.
The Japanese automaker, which has recalled 75,522 RAV4s in China, saw sales of its venture with FAW Group drop out of the 10 top-selling models in February, the state-run newspaper China Daily said Tuesday.
Toyota's overall sales in China slipped to 45,400 units in February from 72,000 the month before.
The company is running big ads in Chinese newspapers offering zero-interest financing for buyers of its Crown sedan, along with a gas coupon worth 88 yuan ($13) — the number 88 is considered lucky in Chinese — and $140 worth of insurance.
"Sales is not Toyota's main goal, but we are sticking to offering the best product and services to our customers," Toyota's spokesman in Beijing, Niu Yu, said in a phone interview.
"It might take time to get through the trust crisis, but we have to be positive and active in doing something," Niu said.
Related information:
China is an ancient civilization extending over a large area in East Asia seen variously as a nation or multinational entity[citation needed].
In 1949, when major combat ended in the Chinese Civil War, two political entities emerged having the term "China" in their names:
The People's Republic of China (PRC), established in 1949, commonly known as China, has control over mainland China and the largely self-governing territories of Hong Kong (since 1997) and Macau (since 1999).
The Republic of China (ROC) established in 1912 on mainland China, now commonly known as Taiwan, has control over the islands of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu.
China is one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations[1] and for most of the last two millennia was one of the largest and most advanced civilizations in the world, until the 1850s when it missed the industrial revolution.[2] Subsequently, imperialism, wars and civil wars damaged the country and its economy up to the end of the civil war in 1949. In the 1950s, change to economic policies in the Republic of China (Taiwan) transformed the island into a technology-oriented industrialized developed economy. It became known as one of the Four Asian Tigers along with Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore. In mainland China, in the 1970s, reforms known as the Four Modernizations modernized the agriculture, industry, technology and defense, eventually making the PRC one of the major powers.[3][4][5][6][7] China is viewed as the source of many major inventions.[8] It has also one of the world's oldest written language systems.
