Americas Sales for the Week Ending November 29, 2008

Black Friday sales for the video game industry were excellent. Nintendo sold 1.8m systems for the week ending November 29 while machines from rivals Microsoft and Sony combined to sell about 1.1m units. Software sales were quite strong as well, but the vast majority of the spike this week is simply from the fact that Americans spent $10 billion ($30/per American if every American shopped) on Black Friday according to various reports, and a lot of that went to video games. Last year, Black Friday week sales were strong as well, but Wii, DS, and Xbox 360 saw significantly better sales this year. PS3 had the weakest Black Friday to Black Friday growth, at 13%, and PS2 declined. Sony's machines accounted for about 1 out of 3 video game machines sold (31%) during Black Friday week in 2007, this year that ratio is down to about 2 out of 9 (22%) as the shares for Microsoft and Nintendo increase. Since Black Friday was at a different point in 2008 than in 2007, two comparisons are included below for the year over year trend. First though, a look at the size of the increases from last week show that value wins out over the holidays, as PS2 and DS had the biggest jumps despite being the oldest viable platforms on the market.