NPD analyst Anita Frazier talks PS3 closing in on Wii, Xbox 360 shortages

The latest NPD sales figures are out, and while it certainly looks like there’s going to be a major change in its regularly Nintendo-dominated scenery soon, there’s a lot of questions that need to be answered. Thankfully, NPD’s own Anita Frazier is here to give us an in-depth view of just what the figures mean. All the details in the full article.

If you’ve seen the NPD sales figures for January of this year, you’d have noticed that the Sony PlayStation 3 is pretty much closing in on the Nintendo Wii, in terms of sales. That in itself is quite the feat, seeing as the motion-sensing underdog has been quite the unstoppable juggernaut from the time it was first unleashed into the market. Now, we get more info about this month’s figures via an interview with NPD’s industry analyst Anita Frazier.

In the interview, Anita Frazier commented that one of the key reasons that the PS3 enjoyed such a huge increase in sales was because of the wide availability of the 40 GB model. She does acknowledge that it could also be other factors combining with the availability to create such an effect, and not just one single primary catalyst.

She then tackled the rather strange phenomenon of Super Mario Galaxy not doing all to well in terms of software sales. In fact, Mario’s next-gen adventure has dropped down to sixth place, with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PS3, PC, Xbox 360) taking top shelf. Anita Frazier countered the deal that most of the top titles this year are all family-friendly far, with Wii Play, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC) and Rock Band (PS3, Xbox 360) dominating (as well as the usual glut of Nintendo DS titles).

Plus, it wouldn’t really do Super Mario Galaxy justice to only look at just one month’s performance, with the title selling 2.7 million units in the US, cementing its place as one of the top 10 of all Mario games.

As for Microsoft Xbox 360 shortages, she has this to say:

Not speaking to any particular platform, I certainly think that coming off a red-hot December there could very well have been instances of hardware shortages and it probably affected more than one hardware platform.

It’s not uncommon to have inventory balancing issues after the holidays. It’s always tricky – no, impossible – to forecast exactly what will happen and plan for the pipeline.

Well, there you have it. It seems that while the shortage of the Xbox 360 is a missed opportunity for Microsoft, one can’t really plan effectively for demand after the holidays. All in all, however, this shaped up to be quite the interesting month in sales – who knows what the future will bring? Updates as we get them!

Via Gamedaily