In this Industry Report

An overall year-on-year view of Q1 09's hardware sales volumes is a flat one, remaining at 16.5m units for both quarters, but the movements of individual platforms and territories are anything but anodyne. Japan suffers recession, as volumes for Wii and DS display drastic decreases, but the DSi, launched in Q4 08, counteracting the impact of the latter's downturn. Xbox 360, meanwhile, makes relatively healthy inroads, spurred by the release of multiple role-playing titles in the past year.

Elsewhere, Nintendo continues its prolific march, as DS and, more potently, the Wii, show vibrant year-on-year growth in both PAL and USA, almost 50% in the case of the Wii in USA. Volumes of Xbox 360 accelerate across the board, most capably in PAL, while PS3 and PSP begin to lull, underscoring Sony's need to push to acquire greater market share in 2009. Furthermore, the importance that Western gaming holds for Japanese publishers is starkly highlighted, as territorial breakdowns of total hardware volumes for Q1 09 attribute less than a fifth of units to the country.

Highlights:

• Wii surges in the West, but stumbles sharply in its homeland of Japan.
• DSi shows promising capacity to revitalise the dipping DS market, and continue the strong levels of penetration for the platform.
• Xbox 360 manages to further its global presence, thanks to aggressive price drops in the second half of 2008.
• The performance of PS3 and PSP dampens, reinforcing the need for a price drop with the former format, and paving the way for a potential hardware refresh for the latter.

In this report:

• World overview
• PAL
• USA
• Japan

List of tables and charts:

Games Intelligence

Author/s

Steve Bailey

Companies mentioned