Video game sales soar in October
Despite a slowing economy, sales of U.S. video games and hardware soared 18 percent from the same month a year ago, according to data released Thursday by market researcher NPD Group.
Hardware sales were up 5 percent to $494.7 million, led by Nintendo's Wii game console. Wii held onto the top spot by selling 803,000 units in October, up from 687,000 in September. The Wii, which has been plagued by shortages, has sold more than 13 million units since its release in November 2006.
Microsoft's Xbox 360 held onto the No. 2 spot by selling 371,000 units, a 7 percent increase over September following a price cut that month. Sony's PlayStation 3 came in third with 190,000 units sold, an 18.2 percent increase over the prior month.
Software sales were up 35 percent to $696.8 million, led by Microsoft's Fable II, which sold 790,000 units. Second place went to Nintendo's exercise game Wii Fit, which sold 487,000 copies.
Meanwhile, sales of portable video games were down 14 percent.
The video game industry faces a tough holiday shopping season, following a bankruptcy filing by retailer Circuit City and a revenue warning from rival Best Buy.
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. Before joining CNET News in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers. E-mail Steven.
PS3 has advantages over the 360. The 360 has advantages in a superior online gaming setup AND simply more games. There's no reason why someone has to like one and hate the other. There's enough room for both. No reason to be a hater.
You may be seeing a lot more 360s among your friends and people you know, but we cannot look inside every home around the world. We have to rely on figures and trust they are reasonably accurate. Figures show that the PS3, outside the US, is stronger... but, it still has to make up the deficit of being launched 12-18 months later than the 360 though, and this margin is only closing at a slow rate. It will take most of the life time of the console to make up.
Bottom line: All 3 consoles have a large install base now, so all 3 are successful. While it is too early to see if any of the 3 will approach the success of the PS2, the Wii is obviously the winner so far. However, in 2 years time it may be different. PS3 is not going down, neither is 360. Wii is still the champ though... for now. Pick the one you enjoy the games on the most, above who has got what. All 3 will be around for a while yet.
I believe there are ways to make the stuff fun and at the same time educating.
But games are like books, TV, movies, radio, music, and anything else. If you don't raise your kids well, anything can have a negative impact. Thus, it is not that games you know of have negative impacts, it is that too few people spend the time preparing kids to function as mature adults who can deal with them.
If anything people buy more games during hard times. Sure. Their more expensive then a movie ticket, but typically they provide more entertainment then if you bought 6 movie tickets at $10 a piece.
smallvoice - Apparently you have never heard of Brain Age.
The current game rating system (ESRB, http://www.esrb.org/ ) is very good and information is easily presented to adults buying games for children.
With some web searching, you can find many independent games suited for children. Sadly there isn't a huge demand for "edutainment", but hopefully more and more parents will promote game development in that area. Still, balance is everything and parents should probably severely limit their children's allotted time for video games. Games aren't really positive unless they can reference (metaphorically) something a person has experienced in life. That said, a lot of the positive side-effects gleamed from playing games are not aligned with current classifications of "education". Many games can bolster multi-tasking and heigten brain activity regardless of subject matter.
More demand and an increased market interest will only increase competition in the edutainment market. Like any game genre, any new interest will only increase the chance that successful titles could be successfully released within a few years.
penny arcade had a good strip on this.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/10/31/
Dave
http://www.findconsolegames.com