Market tracking firm NPD is reporting that the Halo 3 frenzy has not kept Microsoft in the number one place for more than a month: October console sale numbers show 366 thousand Xbox 360s sold compared to 519 thousand Wiis sold. The price-cut to $499 that occurred in the second half of the month did not help Sony to boost sales of the PlayStation 3 compared to the previous month: only about 121 thousand were sold. Sales of Sony PlayStation 2 continued to decline. Combined sales of both PS2 and PS3 in the U.S. were lower than sales of the Xbox 360 alone. Availability of the $399 PS3 model starting November 2nd is expected to revive sales of Sony"s latest game machines.
On the whole, the unit market of non-portable game consoles was down 13% sequentially in October with only Nintendo Wii enjoying considerably unit sales increase. Nintendo sustains its leadership in the market of portable game consoles with 458 thousand of Nintendo DS sold through, whereas sales of Sony PlayStation Portable remained flat with 286 thousand of devices acquired by end-users. It is interesting to note that despite availability of the PSP slim, Sony managed to ship the same amount of its portable game devices compared to the previous month, and Nintendo DS numbers dropped. Shipment figures for Game Boy Advance were not available.