October NPD sales figures

October Hardware Sales figures for North America:

Wii - 519,000
Xbox 360 - 366,000

September Hardware Sales figures for North America:

Xbox 360: 528,000
Wii: 501,000


Wii sales have stayed steady for two months, whereas the surge in hardware sales Halo 3 caused died down in October.

Halo 3 has experienced enormous success, and was clearly the biggest software release this year, but it it seems to have sold mainly to the Xbox 360's existing user base. If Microsoft want to seriously challenge Nintendo for dominance, it needs killer games outside of the FPS and Driving sim genres. Bioshock, The Orange Box, Halo 3, Project Gotham Racing 4; the quality of these games are not in doubt, but their variety is. They all appeal to the same type of gamer, and do nothing to widen the appeal of the Xbox 360.

I feel Microsoft bought Rare with this in mind, but so far they have failed to deliver. Viva Pinata, while excellent, had too young an appeal, and the rest of Rare's efforts have been well short of of AAA status. What is needed are games like Drake's Fortune and Super Mario Galaxy. If Microsoft doesn't overhaul the 360's image quickly, it'll doomed to rerun the same titles again and again, preaching to an already enraptured crowd.

An interesting question to finish with: if the Wii weren't supply constrained, how many could be sold in a month in North America? Is a guess of 1 million really that outlandish?