September 2008 was a slow month for consoles and games, with only Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and the XBox 360 price cut taking effect being the only worthwhile events happening, along with a nationwide financial crisis that could’ve hurt all sales figures on all platforms.

 

 

The system sales figures are as follows:

 

 

1. Wii – 687,000 units
2. Nintendo DS – 536,800 units
3. Xbox 360 – 347,200 units
4. PSP – 238,100 units
5. PlayStation 3 – 232,400 units
6. PlayStation 2 – 173,500 units

As has been the normal, the Nintendo Wii dominated sales figures, even with no huge game releases on the horizon within the remainder of the year. Both portable systems are seeing strong sales, and with three systems being supported, Sony is a clear winner with 644,000 system units when combining the PS3, PS2, and PSP sales.

 

However, with the system that Sony would want to push the most, the Playstation 3, the slow September month along with the 360 price cut helped the 360 edgeahead of that by 110,000 units (helped by the bare-bones 360 Arcade unit’s $199 price tag). However, now that the novelty of the price cut has died down, along with an October that will see the long-awaited releases of the Bioshock PS3 port and the highly-anticipated LittleBigPlanet (with no major X360 game coming out until November in Gears of War 2, and Fable 2 not getting even near the hype that Microsoft has given GoW2 (which is a shame, actually, as Fable 2 is looking to be an awesome game), thus the reason it’s not considered as a heavy hitter), Sony could be banking on surging ahead for October. As for Nintendo, they right now have no immediate causes to worry about anything unless LBP moves casuals away from the Wii to the PS3.

 

Now to the game sales:

 

1. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (LucasArts, Xbox360) – 610,000
2. Wii Fit (Nintendo, Wii) – 518,000
3. Rock Band 2 (Harmonix, Xbox 360) – 363,000
4. Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo, Wii) – 353,000
5. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (LucasArts, PlayStation 3) – 325,000
6. Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (Pandemic, Xbox 360) – 297,000
7. Wii Play (Nintendo, Wii) – 243,000
8. Madden NFL 09 (EA Tiburon, Xbox 360) – 224,000
9. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Krome, Wii) – 223,000
10. Madden NFL 09 (EA Tiburon, PlayStation 2) – 158,000

Lucasarts defenitely saw a nice month as their SW:TFU got huge play across all platforms (935,000 when adding the 360 and PS3 version numbers together, the Wii version, as you can see, was handled by Krome, so such wasn’t factored in for our total sales math). Rock Band 2 was also only avaliable on the white and green system in September, so when the Playstation 3 version hits this Sunday, expect for Harmonix to rake in even more units for October for Rock Band 2.

 

Again, with the slow release calander which only saw a multiplatform game be the top game, all eyes were focused more on October than September, thus the ninth month in the year may have been overlooked as far as what could’ve been avaliable in order to spike sales (the price cut for the 360 did not meet the expectations given by Microsoft). Also something that could’ve been overlooked is a nationwide financial crisis that has seen the Dow Jones Industrial number drop a scary 400 points within a day on most days, with little to no relief either in between or in immediate sight, giving the public a reason to hold off on buying any platform regardless of games or price tag.

 

Again, focus is on October and what is touted as Sony’s strongest month yet for the Playstation 3, with several releases dropping within a few weeks, in which one has gotten mainstream press from USA Today recently (LBP). Microsoft has Fable II to compete, though with the amount of attention the LBP is getting, any other game news is expected to be trumpted by its release.

 

Will Sony rise back up? Is LBP going to dominate? Will Microsoft be able to hang on with Fable II even if it didn’t get as much press as their other heavy hitter in GoW2 got? How much longer will Nintendo be able to continue to play it safe with their casual strategy? Will the economic issues affecting the country continue to affect game sales, as well, in October and just murder every expectation anyone had? 

 

For anyone who gets excited about seeing such a console war happen, October should be very interesting. What do you think?