Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Sony (NYSE:SNE), and Nintendo (PINK:NTDOY) had a lot riding on this past Christmas. New motion control hardware flooded shelves, high-definition hardware continued to sell well, and, for Nintendo, the company’s home and portable consoles continued to experience significant sales declines after half a decade of dominance.
But all three can breathe a modest sigh of relief: the holidays weren’t the disaster some were predicting. On the other hand, there wasn’t that much to celebrate for companies not named Microsoft.
According to December sales data released Thursday by research firm NPD, Microsoft was the clear winner. Even though Nintendo’s devices sold more than the Xbox 360, it was the success of Microsoft’s new Kinect hands-free motion control device that was the major holiday hardware success. Roughly 5 million Kinect devices were sold worldwide in December, according to Microsoft, and based on previous reports, about 2 million of those sales were from the U.S.
The Xbox 360 itself sold an impressive 1.86 million consoles in December, up 42% from last year and giving the console its single best month of sales ever by 420,000. While precise numbers weren’t given, NPD did say that Microsoft’s Kinect Sports and Dance Central for the Kinect have sold in excess of 1 million copies each since their release in November, a promising start for software on the device.
Nintendo’s numbers were good, though undoubtedly disappointing considering the company’s record-breaking holidays from the previous three years. 2.36 million Wii consoles were sold in December, a decline of 38% that further emphasizes that 2011 will be the machine’s last year of market viability. Nintendo’s new November game Donkey Kong Country Returns took the No. 5 slot on the top ten list for best-selling games in December, but the lack of a hit like New Super Mario Bros. Wii or Mario Kart Wii clearly hurt Nintendo.
Also saturated is the Nintendo DS handheld device market. Just 2.5 million of them were sold in December, impressive sales to be sure, but still leaving the system down 24% from a year earlier.
But more damning is the complete absence of Nintendo DS games from NPD’s charts. The March release of the DS’ successor, the glasses-free 3-D handheld Nintendo 3DS, can’t come soon enough for Nintendo. Of course, with some analysts predicting 18.7 million iPod sales, 16 million iPhone sales, and 6 million iPad sales for the fourth quarter of 2010, it’s still up in the air whether the Nintendo 3DS will be able to stave of Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) growing presence in portable gaming.
Sony brought up the rear in gaming hardware in December, with disappointing PlayStation 3 sales of 1.21 million consoles. Hyped game releases like driving simulator Gran Turismo 5 failed to excite Christmas shoppers, leading to hardware sales that were down 11%. Sony failed to even mention their portable device, the PSP, in their press statement regarding holiday sales, a final nail in the device’s coffin after six years on the market.
Most disappointing of all for Sony is that its motion control device, the Wii-like PlayStation Move, failed to excite customers in the same way as Microsoft’s Kinect. Though NPD didn’t report specific Move sales numbers for December, the low hardware sales and absence of Move-compatible software from the charts is evidence enough to show that the device has yet to broaden the PlayStation audience.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
