Wow, that's a lot of hardware sales. The only surprise is how strong the PS2 is still selling. With such strong number, perhaps Sony is kind of "cutting off their nose to spite their face." You can probably assume that PS3 early adapters have already bought the system and late adapters (of the last generation) who have bought a PS2 this year or even last year, will not be buying the PS3 for quite some time. So now Sony is kind of stuck in this no-mans land of the vast majority general public. Sony really needs to start selling those PS3 units and show developers they are in the game. Obviously all manufacturers will have a 2 or 3 fold increase in sales leading into the holidays, but I think that the 3-4 months after x-mas is when we should pay more attention to. Hopefully Sony can keep up some of the momentum and start getting a better foothold. I don't think it will happen (in the long run), but it would be sad to see Sony really starting to struggle with the PS3 brand. I'm sure I feel like most gamers here (non-fanboys) and just want all 3 major consoles to have a strong foothold in gaming. That way, we the consumers can only benefit by having a larger and more divers gaming library to entertain ourselves with.

Well, I guess AC did way better than many would have predicted. And I'm kinda glad that it sold well. Not because I'm a particular fan of the game - didn't have that much time to toy around with it. It, however, makes clear that a new IP can be successful if you only put enough weight behind it.

Yeah, is the Top 20 info fully correct or complete? It seems really odd to me that CoD4 is an incredible blockbuster on 360 and PS3, but doesn't make it to sell more than 18.000 copies on PC. Hell, Orange Box sold almost 100K, Steam sales not included.

I surprised by PS3 sales... with the price cut and new Ad campaign, I would think it would have sold a lot more. Hopefully, with the game lineup for 2008, they will do better.

Good to see XBox 360 is doing well.

Why? Looks like it kept their ps2 sales up nicely.

And it seems like Crysis should have done better than 86k. But it doesn't matter to me, because I'm too cool to care about NPD numbers anyway (go DS!)

No one expected the Wii to be what it is. It will be next Christmas for us to see if third party developers pick up the slack.

I wouldn't worry too much about the NPD PC sales numbers - from what I've heard, their PC sales tracking system is wildly inaccurate.

I ask this every month. And every month people scoff at the mere question. But really... It seems like they've sold enough DSes to cover just about every gamer who wants one. It's quite incredible. Especially when the library, while pretty good, isn't that great. I get the PS2 still selling. It has one of the greatest libraries in history.

Maybe it's the whole portable thing. Only time to game for some is on the go, etc. Amazing.

I think both the DS and Wii have that problem. Often after the NPDs I'll go look at what software I would actually buy for the DS if I felt like buying one again. And it comes back to the same games. Ouendan, Nintendogs, Animal Crossing and then maybe toss in something new like Zelda (although I'm a bit tired of that franchise).

Then I look at the Wii software. What would I want to buy? Other than Wii Sports? Pretty much Super Mario Galaxy. I have no problem if the Wii becomes the default platform of first choice for devs in the future. I think trending away from the graphics whores would be fine. The problem is that no one is really delivering solid gameplay for the Wii yet. So what will be disheartening is if the 360 hovers around 10-14 million while the Wii rockets past it and the development money shifts to the Wii to cash in with more bad games. The XBox could get somewhat marginalized again and in favor of shovelware with waggle.

Oh, and I think all of this lend's creedance to that dude at Activision who said that the PS3 and 360 have to get down to $200 fast. The Wii is slaughtering both consoles. Especially given the fact that the 360 actually has a really great, if someone shooter-heavy, lineup. I personally still prefer the 360. Largely on the strength of Live and XBLA. But if this trend continues they have to drop the price steeply, in my opinion.

Or maybe I'm wrong and for the consumers buying millions of DSes and Wiis the 360 just isn't that compelling. That tells me that Microsoft should focus more on XBLA. I'm not certain that Microsoft can shake the hardcore gamer image quickly enough with fresh IP like Viva Pinata.

Also, the millions upon millions spent advertising Halo 3 probably wasn't the wisest investment of their ad dollars. Regardless of what they did, Halo was going to sell millions without the giant ad push they put on. That money could have been spent buying new games for XBLA and marketing the XBLA to the same casual gamers who are choosing to buy the Wii instead.

Or I could be wrong and Microsoft loses just because they're named Microsoft and doesn't have a game with a plumber.

I would buy the Wii for one game (assuming I could find the damn thing) Super Smash Brothers: Brawl. I loved playing the other two for the N64 and then later on the Game Cube. Tournament mode was great for when you had people over, and now that it has online play, talk about awesome! Now I just need Nintendo to work with me here and actually get some units to the stores.

The interesting thing about the Wii is how different it is in terms of games. The Wii is the only system that I see that literally makes games to play with toddlers and little children. The kind of stuff that you'd see on a Saturday morning cartoon show. It's really phenomenal thinking on Nintendo's part - my wife always talks about keeping our future child away from 'those games I see you play', but I know that there are a ton of other Wii games that would make me sick playing on my own, but that I can play with my kid and just be happy that we can share that interaction. I think Mario and Sonic is indicative of this.

I don't think that the Wii, or any future Nintendo console, will ever have a ton of 'gamer' games on it. We'll never have another Super Nintendo. It's sad in some sense, but in others I'm really looking forward to what they can bring to the family experience.

Addendum: I understand that one could say that a Wiimote is just a gamepad with a new way of pressing buttons (swoosh left is a button 18, flick down is button 23), but that misses the point. People don't like the Wiimote because now they can open their inventory by jumping up and down, they like the Wiimote because now they can swing their tennis racket by swinging their arm as if they were holding a tennis racket. Developers have never had to worry about mapping controls to intuitive real world actions; up to this point, the closest I've seen are things like in Assassin's Creed where Y is for the head, X and B for left and right hands, and A for legs. It's pretty rudimentary, and not at all like the sort of direct motion translation that people are expecting from a motion-based system. It's legitimate for the developers to need time to assimilate that sort of severe thought-shift. (Of course, that won't keep people from bitching about it. )

The Wii has great games. I'm not sure why people think Nintendo will be different than they have always been just because they are in the lead now. The great games are going to be primarily Nintendo franchises, and Nintendo will bank that cash. When I picked up a Wii last January, my expectation was exactly what we got. Some great Mario (and other Nintendo franchise) games, some fun party games, some weird games.

Yeah, Mario and sonic Olympics looks like it should be awful. But after reading Bill Harris' views on it, it will be one of the games I get for my daughter this Christmas. Yep, its another game full of cute characters, but it seems like they got the gameplay down.

Yes, I buy far more 360 games than Wii games. But there have been enough good Wii games that it has felt like a solid purchase. My daughter, who is 10, plays primarily on the Wii (but more on her DS). The Wii is a great family console. If you spend most of your time play COD4, TF2, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, and other mature titles, the Wii is going to be an iffy choice. You should really buy the Wii if you like what Nintendo does, and just enjoy the fact that Nintendo is doing it better now than they did with the Gamecube.

Most everything people complain about the Wii is true. But how can you expect a company that is practically printing money doing what they are doing to change? The Gamecube was full of great games as well, but it did not differentiate itself enough to become something special. The Wii has accomplished that.

There is something about Nintendo that makes their franchises so dominant. Even in out household, We have bought very few third party games for our daughter, or even ourselves. Pokemon is still dominant. The only third party game my daughter wants is the latest Harry Potter, and for that she thinks she may prefer the 360.

The video games I will probably get for her this christmas are the Olympics game, Phantom Hourglass, and then one other, either HP or more likely Cooking Mama for the Wii, which y daughter really wants after having rented it. I'd like to pick up Zak and Wiki as well, but at some point my wife will go ballistic.

The Wii game I want is Mario Galaxy, but that is on the back burner, as my daughter does not seem to be interested in it. This is where Nintendo is really failing. They need more demos on the Wii. But after SMG, my daughter is craving SSBB like everyone else. She's 10, and I think this already getting to be too many games for her, as she has plenty of other activities (skating and dance classes, she reads vociferously, and she is learning to cook ( she's an avid Good Eats viewer!) and her grandmother bought her her a sewing machine this summer so she is also learning to sew.

I'd say the Wii has plenty of games if you have other things to do in your life as well. For me, the 360 has far more games than I have time to play. That's not bad, but it means I could care less if there becomes a glut of Wii games at some point or not. Wii60 ownership means there are plenty of games for everyone in our family. truth be told, if we did not have a child, I may not have a Wii at this point. But Nintendo knows that there are plenty of families with kids that will buy their products.

I'll take an educated guess and call bs on spots 11-20. I think the sales numbers are accurate, but the sales positions aren't.

Since when did the NPD start lumping in pc and console game sales together in the same chart? News to me.

Also I don't see GH3 on the 360 up there. It's pretty safe to say it sold more than 18k copies, right?

There's no Zapper there either, but maybe they put that in a different category even though WiiPlay is always in the software category.