I’m aware that I ordinarily post my impressions about NPD numbers on the same day they release, but this month was different. There was a lot of interesting factors to consider that came into play for all of the players in November, and it was a tense month. Sony was entering the month on the release of a new, lower priced model and the release of their last big first party titles for the year; Microsoft had their last big first party game of the year and was coming 2 months off of the sales boost granted by Halo 3, and was under pressure to do better than what was considered by many analysts to be a mediocre November last year, assisted as it was by Gears of War’s release. Finally, for Nintendo, it was to be a test of their ability to get stock into stores, as they continued to play a dangerous game of supply and demand with their console. There was also the matter of the first new proper Mario game in ages.
So with all this, how did everyone do? Here are the hardware numbers proper, courtesy of 1UP: