Worldwide console sales Q112

This year’s first quarter console sales results are here and as we’ve expected or not, there are some changes that might seem surprising to many of us. So, here are the latest financial results regarding the console market and the Q112.

The Q112 sales results show that Sony’s PlayStation 3 was put back atop the worldwide console market. Although PS3 reclaimed the title, it had to deal with a unit sales decline. Last year PS3 managed to sell 2.1 million units but the first quarter of 2012 came up with only 1.9 million units sold. Just another sign that the game console market is going through some tough times.

Things haven’t been that great for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 either. Even if the console won the first place in the worldwide sales race in 2011, this year proved to be rather disappointing as the sales fell almost 50%. Only 1.4 million Xbox 360 units were sold worldwide in the latest quarter. But Microsoft has come up with a solution to juice the Xbox 360 sales a little by offering a 4GB Xbox 360 with Kinect and a two-year Xbox Live subscription for $99.

The first quarter proved to be less lucrative for Wii as well. Nintendo saw its sales fall by 1 million units describing this as its first annual loss. The upcoming launch of Wii U is expected to bring things back to the way they were though.

All in all, it’s not that difficult to see that the console market is facing some hard times. Is that because mobile phones and tablets are morphing into bigger platforms for games? Or because other types of living-room devices are becoming multipurpose machines? Time will most probably tell.