Americas Sales for the Week Ending November 29, 2008

232w ago - 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.

Although Wii had a smaller percentage increase, it increased almost as much as DS did in raw units sold (470,000 vs. 610,000). Five Xbox 360s sold for every two that sold last week, an impressive increase.

PSP had a percentage increase almost as great as PS2, and DS in percentage, but it was only about a 170,000 unit increase. PS2 and PS3 each saw increases of almost 100,000 units from the previous week.

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