Nintendo Sales Improve, But Xbox 360 Threatens

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Microsoft scored a hit in video game sales during 2011. According to MarketWatch,

The Xbox 360 from Microsoft was the best-selling home videogame console last year in the U.S. market, moving a total of 7.3 million units for the year — about 62% more than the units sold by its two main competitors.

 

That has not stopped Nintendo, once the leader in global video game sales, from fighting back. Itlost is first place as the Wii aged and was overtaken in most regions by the Sony (NYSE: SNE) PS3 and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Xbox 360. Nintendo has moved back into a strong position in the US video game market. The Japanese company said it has sold 4.5 million of its new DS3 product in America since it was launched. Nintendo has released several games for the console that have increased demand as well. But, Nintendo will almost certainly face sales pressure as the end of the year approaches and holiday sales become critical to each of the three console companies. Microsoft and Sony have dropped prices on their products before as they tried to elbow Nintendo out of the market. The price of the DS3 will drop as it attempts to match the price points of its competitors. And, with that, margins will fall.

 

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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