With 2010 now underway, analysts are looking ahead to make projections for the full calendar year. Wii sales in 2009 started to decline significantly in the second half, until the December holiday surge. Satoru Iwata believes the console has "recovered," but if you ask Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian, that holiday momentum won't last. He's forecasting a 20% decline in unit sales for the Wii this year.
"One key takeaway from the holiday period is that there is ample demand for console hardware at reduced price points. Not only did Nintendo’s Wii benefit from a reacceleration in unit sales at lower price points ($149 in many stores), but PS3 sell-through is improving and the Xbox 360 is maintaining momentum. While not surprising that the Wii disproportionately sold more units in 4Q, as it remains a popular gift item, the recently reported 3+ million units sold in December exceeded our expectations. However, we remain cautious in modeling follow-on Wii sales in 2010," he said.
"For the year, we are currently modeling a 10% increase in PS3 unit sales, Xbox 360 unit sales down 5%, and a 20% decline in Nintendo Wii unit sales. There is upside potential to our estimates with further hardware price reductions. At this point, we expect the console-installed base to increase by roughly 25% to 70 million units, and above the 57 million console units installed of the last generation platforms at the end of 2005."
With an increasing interest in HDTVs and a solid software lineup for Sony's console, we'd expect the PS3 to have a great year in 2010. The Wii, on the other hand, may need to incorporate another price drop to $149 to further entice consumers.
4 Comments
8 months ago
I'd agree that the Wii will continue to decline and PS3 will continue to gain momentum but it's anyone's guess what happens to the 360. Project Natal is either going to be hit or miss, 360's exclusive lineup for 2010 can't hold a candle to the PS3's so if Project Natal doesn't give it the huge boost they're expecting Microsoft may well be all out of ideas for this generation.
8 months ago
360 is a bit harder to predict, you're right. I think we're likely to see some combination of price cuts and bundles involving Natal, which should give the 360 a boost.
8 months ago
It's funny how all this sort of assumes that they're on the same playing field - even with that reduction, Wii still sells more on a monthly basis. Still, the PS3 is at a good price, has some great software coming and there's every reason to believe it'll do well. Heck, EVERY console may do well in it's own right; yes it is in fact possible for everyone to win.
8 months ago
While we haven't reached sales numbers of the Playstation 2, I think both Xbox and Wii will decline slightly because they already penetrated the market farther than Playstation 3, so people getting thier second or third console may pick up a now cheaper Playstation 3. I also think in this generation, its going to be a significant factor as compared to past generations. I predict that due to the recession and longer development hours towards existing games that this generation is going to last much longer. Hence each console is going to be given the time to reach full penetration of the market.
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