The PlayStation 3 may have managed to outsell all other home consoles in the United States last month, but that success was fleeting. According to new NPD numbers quoted by GamesIndustry.biz, Nintendo’s Wii reclaimed its top dog status in October.
NPD’s breakdown of U.S. console unit sales for October looks like so:
Nintendo Wii – 506,900 Nintendo DS – 457,600 PlayStation 3 – 320,600 Xbox 360 – 249,700 PlayStation Portable – 174,600 PlayStation 2 – 117,800
PS3 sales went down quite substantially from 491,800 units in September to just 320,600 in October. (Perhaps the infatuation brought on by Sony’s late August price cut just wore off.) Meanwhile, Wii unit sales went up around 10%, likely thanks to the late September cut that brought the console from $250 to $200. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 remained in third place behind the Wii and PS3, albeit with sales down 29% from the previous month.
The console business as a whole continues to suffer from the recession, though. This year’s running total of console unit sales reportedly lies 10% below last year’s unit sales for the January-October time frame, the research firm says, and revenue also fell by 19% between October 2008 and October 2009.