Analyst: September PS3 And Wii Sales See Double-Digit Percentage Declines

As NPD Group tightens the lid on the hardware sales figures in its public monthly reports, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter offered up some of the missing data in a post-NPD research note on Friday. At U.S. retail during September, Pachter said PlayStation 3 sales were down 37 percent year-on-year to 312,000 units. The console had a challenging comparison to September 2009, when Sony cut the price of the console and introduced a slimmer version of the machine. Pachter had expected the PS3 to sell 275,000 units during September, but the recent release of the motion-sensing PlayStation Move controller and the August introduction of the 160GB version of the system contributed to the higher-than-estimated sales, he said. Wii sales dropped by 45 percent year-over-year to 254,000 units for the month. "The Wii continues to struggle due to gamer fatigue and a lack of high-profile releases," said the analyst. Microsoft openly touted its Xbox 360 September sales figures, which rose 37 percent year-on-year to 484,000 units. The company is still riding high on the successful launch of Halo Reach and the August release of the lower-priced Xbox 360 Slim Arcade. Xbox 360 was the only console to see a year-on-year rise in sales in September. Overall, home console unit sales were down 20 percent year-on-year. Pachter said that Apple's move into gaming is taking away marketshare from the traditional big three console makers. "We believe the iPod Touch is cannibalizing dedicated game handheld hardware sales, and expect weakness in handhelds to persist until the 2011 introduction of the Nintendo 3DS (February 26 in Japan, March in U.S. and Europe)," he said.