Nintendo DS 2.47 million
Wii 1.35 million
Xbox 360 1.26 million
PlayStation 2 1.1 million
PlayStation Portable 1.06 million
PlayStation 3 797.6k
1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Activision, Xbox 360) 1.47 million
2. Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo, Wii) 1.40 million
3. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Activision, PS2) 1.25 million
4. Wii Play (Nintendo, Wii) 1.08 million
5. Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft, Xbox 360) 893.7k
6. Halo 3 (Microsoft, Xbox 360) 742.7k
7. Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day (Nintendo, DS) 659.5k
8. Madden NFL 08 (Electronic Arts, PS2) 655.2k
9. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Activision, Xbox 360) 624.6k
10. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games (Sega, Wii) 613k
December, typically the biggest month of the year with holiday sales, was no slouch as could be expected. Nintendo DS has now firmly replaced the GameBoy Advance and taken its place at the top of the hardware charts. By a slight margin, Wii retains the console lead. Xbox 360 now in its third holiday season came a close second and up from last year, but even still, it’s a questionable performance for a system that’s been on the market for so long. Granted, with only one very small price cut in over two years, it’s not overly surprising. PS2, with over 130 million sales and counting, continues to refuse to die. Its younger sibling, however, came up short as usual, although 800k units is pretty good for a $500 system.
On the software side, the story remains Xbox 360, Activision, and Nintendo. Activision, which throughout the year has shown itself to be as strong as Electronic Arts in terms of sales, continues to get a strong performance out of Guitar Hero and now Call of Duty. Wii Play, the second best selling game of the year behind Halo 3, is still selling strong nearly a year after its release, while Super Mario Galaxy, despite struggling in Japan, has been a strong performer as we’ve come to expect from other Nintendo first party efforts.