2009: Despite Wii Sales Market Declines

Nintendo games sold well in 2009, but the video game industry is still witnessed a decline overall. A study was published by MCV, which created a chart of the five best selling games of 2009. The sales numbers were based on numbers taken from the NPD Group, Gfk-ChartTrack, and Enterbrain Inc.

Image via MCV

As the chart reads, while Nintendo did not manage to take the top spot from the outrageous numbers of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, they did manage to take the next four, selling over five million copies per title.

While these numbers certainly make Nintendo's system seem great, the overall video game market (both hardware and software) saw a decline in 2009. How could that be, with these fantastic numbers? Blame the PS2. "The overall gaming software market in 2009 declined in large part due to the shrinking PlayStation 2 software market, which experienced a 57 percent decrease across the top global markets in 2009," claimed the report.

When looking into each global market individually, there were decreases for each area. In the US, there was a seven percent decrease in the overall software numbers. One of these reasons was because of the sheer amount of competition. "The year end data from 2009 shows us that the number of titles entering the market is still growing. 778 new titles were released in 2009, up from the 764 in 2008," the report stated.

In the UK, PS3 and Xbox 360 saw positive growth, however they were not able to overcome the large decline of four million units exhibited by the PS2. Also, even though the Wii sold the most units of the four consoles, it wasn't able to hit its sales numbers of a year earlier, and saw a ten-percent decrease.

In Japan, Nintendo had a fantastic second half of the year, with hits like New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Wii Fit Plus, however they were not able to overcome their slow start to 2009.

Speaking to the entire market, do you think that we will continue to see overall declines in the video game market yearly until we see a new console generation (i.e. Wii HD, PS4, etc.)? Or will the right combination of software and hardware innovations such as Natal and the Vitality Sensor allow the market to rebound?