The year 2007 willl go down as one of the best years in gaming from a sales perspective.  The industry saw a 43% increase over last year spurred on my the Wii, Halo3, Guitar Hero III, Call of Duty 4 and Xbox 360.  Lest first break down the hardware numbers:

 - Nintendo DS Lite:     2.47m
 - Nintendo Wii:           1.35m
 - Microsoft Xbox 360: 1.26m
 - Sony PS2:                1.1m
 - Sony PSP:                1.06m
 - Sony PS3:                 797K

Another holiday and another great month for Nintendo which had the best home console and portable console.  The DS out sold the PSP over 2:1 while the Wii out sold the PS3 1.7:1 on hardware sales.  Nintendo has just dominated Sony this holiday season.  Microsoft has to be very happy selling 1.26 million consoles and just narrowly getting beat by the Wii.  Microsoft has to be very happy that they sold almost a half a million consoles more than Sony.

 1.  Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360) -- 1.47m
 2. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) -- 1.40m
 3. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PS2) -- 1.25m
 4. Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii) -- 1.08m
 5. Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360) -- 894K
 6. Halo 3 (Xbox 360) -- 743K
 7. Brain Age 2 (DS) -- 660K
 8. Madden NFL 08 (PS2) -- 655K
 9. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Xbox 360) -- 625K
 10. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games (Wii) -- 613K

The games of December were lead by Xbox 360 games sporting four titles in the top ten.  Mario proved he has incredible selling power as Super Mario Galaxy and Mario and Sonic at the Olympics cracked the top ten.  The causal gamers made their voices heard as Wii Play, Brian Age 2, Guitar Hero III (PS2, 360) and Madden took five of the top ten positions in the chart.  There are no Sony PS3 games in the top ten.

I don't know how many times one can shout this fact but the PS3 is dead in North America.  The PS3 is not gaining ground on the Wii or the Xbox 360 and it seems that the people that are buying the game console are only using it to play movies.  There have been several PS3 commercials in prime viewing times yet they can't manage to break the one million mark in the best sales month of the year?  The PS2 never had this problem and neither did the Xbox or Xbox 360.  In 2007 the Xbox 360 (4.62m) out sold the PS3 (3.82m) by 800,000 units and that gap is growing. 

The biggest telling figure is that the PS3 did not have a single game in the top in December.  How much longer will software developers support the PS3 if their games do not sell?  The game support problem will only grow worse now that it is rumored that Sony is hiring developers to work on the next Playstation.    Sony can hang their hat on their improved sales numbers but it seems that they are really only in a fight for second place.

World wide the Wii has proven that it can sell a ton of units and will appeal to just about any fan of games.  So much has been said about how strong Sony is in Europe.  Well the truth is that the PS3 is still fighting for second place in Europe and Australia. The Xbox 360 is leading all next gen consoles in Europe, Australia and the US.  The Xbox 360 has sold 2.8 million consoles in Europe while the Wii has 1.9 million and the PS3 has 950K units sold.  If this pace keeps up the Wii will surpass the Xbox 360 but it is not likely the PS3 will pass up the Xbox 360 anytime soon in Europe.  In Australia the Xbox 360 has sold more than twice as many PS3s and the holds a nice lead on the Wii but again if the Wii continues it's strong sales it will pass the Xbox 360.  The only hope for Sony is that people will start buying the console as a cheap BluRay player.  Maybe then people will eventually start buying PS3 games but why bother when the PS2 is still out and it's easier to port a Wii game over to the PS2 than the PS3.


Sources:
www.joystiq.com/2008/01/17/december-npd-no-wonder-youre-broke-this-month/
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/01/big-in-europe-p.html