The NPDs for February should come out this week or next and I'm beginning to wonder how the recent economy will impact sales.  Ever since the Wii launched it has been a power house selling incredible numbers and being almost impossible to find in stores.  On my last few visits to Target and Best Buy it's clear that finding a Wii is no longer an issue.  Just last night when I was at Target there were 10 Wii consoles in their display case.  When I was at Best Buy last week there were probably 30 Wii consoles stacked up on the back wall with a few dozen Rock Band and Guitar Hero boxes.

Now we didn't see much of a drop off in the average monthly sales for the Wii in January.  In fact January was a very good month for both the Wii and Xbox 360 game consoles in terms of sales even in the fact of the current economic down turn.  This might suggest that both consoles will do well this month as well.  I just don't see that happening.  I guess one should define what would be considered a down month for the Wii.  The worst month the Wii had last years was January when they only sold 274,000 units which was mostly due to limited supply.  The next lowest month was February with 432,000 sales.  I think this number will be a good bar to judge how the Wii is performing.  I would think moving around 400,000 as a good month but moving less than 275,000 as a bad month for the Wii.

I do expect the sales of the Wii to continue to drop as the economy sputters but I expect to see the sales of the 360 and PS3 to hold steady.  Why is this?  I tend to think the Wii appealed to the more casual game playing fan which I presume to be more fickle.  The casual fan won't bare the expense of a game console but a hard core fan will forgo other entertainment options to buy games.  I think it will be interesting to see what happens over the next couple months.