Nintendo, portables make up for slump in US game console market

Port Washington (NY) - The spin from analysts yesterday, in anticipation of this week’s NPD Funworld report on the state of the US home video game market - both the positive and negative variety - turned out to be true to some degree. The market is indeed healthy, claims the analyst firm, if we take into account the extraordinary success of Sony’s PlayStation Portable and both of Nintendo’s handheld units. Meteoric and unanticipated triumphs aside, however, the console market is in trouble.

The story of 2005 appears to be - believe it or not - Nintendo. Its Game Boy Advance portable unit, called "the backbone of the portable market" by NPD, accounted for 64% of the grand total of $1.4 billion in software sales for portable game units during the year. With the remainder of the market split between Nintendo’s other handheld - its new DS - and the PSP, Nintendo can once again reclaim a commanding lead in a significant segment of the gaming industry. The payoff for that company (cue the Super Mario music, please) is a near doubling of the entire portable hardware market : up 96% in dollar volume over the prior year.

Meanwhile, home-based consoles may as well be playing in a different universe. The NPD report did not state so explicitly - it avoided the "M" word - but it’s obvious that Xbox 360 was a detrimental factor - if not the detrimental factor. It wasn’t the economy this time around, believes NPD, but instead a perfect storm of negative forces peculiar to the industry unto itself : Multiple delays in software availability for current consoles drove up consumer anticipation for next generation consoles, for which Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was to have led the way. But a severe shortage in supply simply drove customers back into wait-and-see mode, apparently going back into hibernation prior to Sony’s release of PlayStation 3 later this spring.

As a result, home console sales were down 3% in 2005, according to NPD, while sales of software were down 8%, and accessories down 12% over 2004.

With a November release, no software titles for Xbox 360 managed to make their way onto NPD’s Top 10 best-sellers list for the year. EA’s Madden NFL ’06, released last August, was the only Xbox title to make the list, at #4. Meanwhile, Nintendo’s own Pokemon Emerald for Game Boy Advance made #2. Madden NFL ’06 for PlayStation 2 was the #1 seller for the year, with Sony’s Gran Turismo 4 for PS2 at #3, and EA’s NCAA Football ’06 for PS2 at #5. Numbers 6 through 10 on the NPD list were all claimed by PlayStation 2 titles.