Boomtown X

The latest NPD sales figures for the North American market make for happy reading for Microsoft, Sony less so. Of course Microsoft's happiness must be tempered by the continued dominance of Wii and DS. But here are the hardware unit sales figures for December:

Nintendo DS – 2.5 million (-24%)
Nintendo Wii – 2.36 million (-38% YOY)
Xbox 360 – 1.86 million (+42% YOY)
PlayStation 3 – 1.21 million (-11% YOY)

Perhaps more interesting that the actual unit sales are the pecentage falls and rises compared to December 2009. Xbox 360 saw a massive sales rise compared to the previous year in a market that's fallen by five percent for the year and nine percent comparing December to December. When one combines software, hardware and accessory sales Xbox 360 came out as the leading earner.

According to the UK Interactive Entertainment Association (formerly ELSPA) the UK videogames industry saw its highest grossing week ever - an estimated £113.8 million.

The record breaking week is thanks to the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Microsoft Kinect.

Black Ops entered the chart in top place, meanwhile eight of Kinect's launch games made the top 40.

"The video games and interactive entertainment industry has already seen a great start to quarter 4 2010 and the success of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Microsoft’s Kinect adds to this," said the UKIE's Mike Rawlinson. "The positive sales figures of titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops, new hardware launches like Kinect, the emergence of casual/mobile games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope and social networking games such as Farmville show that video games and other forms of interactive entertainment continue to be played by more people than ever – with 1 in 3 people in the UK now being gamers."

"Given the huge audiences for games on all formats, 2010 has been a year of unprecedented activity and focus. And with more video games than ever before being played, on an ever growing range of games consoles, PCs, mobile phones, mobile devices and internet enabled TVs, the industry has widened beyond all expectations and will continue to expand exponentially in 2011."

At last some sense. Namco Bandai believes that game prices have risen too high. Namco Bandai vice president Olivier Comte feels that publishers need to get costs down via shorter games so the saving can be passed on to retailers.