Console sales up 53% in February - Nintendo the big winner

Sales of game consoles were up 53 percent last month compared to the figures from February 2006. The top two slots are dominated by Nintendo, with the DS and Wii accounting for 820,000 sales.

In the software charts Nintendo also has three titles in the top ten sales charts with Wii Play, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Wario Ware: Smooth Moves coming in at two, four and nine, respectively.

One of the surprises are the extremely good sales of the PS2 console, which outsells the PS3 by more than two to one. More than 295,000 PS2 consoles were sold in February, compared to only 127,000 PS3 consoles.

The Xbox 360 came in number four in hardware sales, with a respectable 228,000 units sold. Even better were the sales of their new IP: Crackdown sold 427,000 copies to land in the top slot for software despite a very late start in the month. While the inclusion of the Halo 3 beta invitation may have been a part of that, generally good reviews point to what may be a new franchise for Microsoft. 360 games also enjoyed high placement on the top-ten sales chart, holding the first, seventh, ninth, and tenth places with titles like Gears of War, Lost Planet, and NBA Street Homecourt. Both Gears of War and Lost Planet have been doing very well in maintaining strong sales across multiple months, which is a solid sign for the growth of a mature library.

Sony put a positive spin on its February performance, noting that "February 2007 showed a 67 percent increase in retail dollars generated year-over-year for SCEA in the US with total sales of $377 million." Sony is also holding firm on their plan to shop 6 million PlayStation 3s before the end of their fiscal year in two weeks. The question is how many of these systems will they sell through to consumers; the European launch next week should help. The only console the PlayStation 3 was able to outsell was the Nintendo Gamecube, and Sony's 127,000 systems pale in comparison to its two competitors.

The PSP did a bit better than the PS3 with 176,000 units sold.