An analyst with Janco, Mike Hickey, says that a major price cut for the PS3 could be on the way in the next few days. According to Hickey (Who I’m assuming has no marks on his neck) the price drop needs to be at least $100 to get retail sales moving again.

If it doesn’t happen, Sony console sales are expected to continue to decline. This wouldn’t be a huge surprise, but we’ll have to see what happens.

In my home, we have a Wii, Xbox, and PS3 so most of my son’s friends end up over here playing video games after school. The one console that all of them were hoping for last Christmas was the Wii. It seems they weren’t alone in their dreams of a Wii.

Nintendo is talking up the numbers just released by the NPD Group that talk about the gaming market in 2008. According to NPD, the Nintendo Wii and DS game systems were the most popular systems, by a long way, during 2008.

This is hardly shocking news, but according to the Wall Street Journal, both Nintendo’s Wii and the Xbox 360 clobbered the PS3 in holiday sales. U.S. sales fell nine percent from this month last year. During the same period, sales doubled for the Wii and were up eight percent for the Xbox 360.

That’s what happens when you fail to cut prices on your system, and the lack of exclusive game titles didn’t help either. Not to mention a bunch of inexpensive Blu-ray players. The end result is that the PS3 was the least attractive option for buyers. Apparently, it’s not even fit to roast a decent weiner.

My son is one of the proudest kids in the neighborhood when it comes to video games since we have a Wii, PS3, and an Xbox (all for work naturally). The thing most of the kids want to play is the Wii and many of his friends are asking Santa for a Wii this Christmas.

The catch is that the Wii is still notoriously hard to find, despite the fact that Nintendo is making more of the consoles this holiday season than it did last year. Nintendo has announced that it has set US sales records with its Wii and DS game systems.

The Nintendo Wii continues to dominate the sales charts and sell so well that most people who want one can’t find it. Odds are the Wii is at the top of many holiday wish lists this Christmas season. If you have been lucky enough to get your hands on a Wii, you will need some accessories to go with it. One such accessory is a charge station for the remotes.

Nyko has announced a new accessory called the Charge Station Quad for Nintendo Wii that will retail for $49.99. The device has spots for four Wii Remotes and includes new rechargeable batteries and battery doors to allow the Wii Remotes to be recharged.

September games sales actually showed the first decline since March of 2006 according to the NPD Group, however things are still not looking too tough for the gaming industry. September of 2007 saw a huge hike in sales due to the release of Halo 3 which is contrasted by slightly lower sales this last September of 2008.

The drop is sales was not the only change of events for September, either. Due to the price cut of the Xbox 360 models, Microsoft saw a significantly noticeable boost in sales for its console from 195k units sold in August, to 347k units sold in September of this year, bringing it ahead of Sony’s PS3. Microsoft dropped the price to $50 less than the Wii and half of what the PS3 costs, making it the least expensive current-generation game console on the market.

Nintendo’s Wii has now surpassed the Xbox 360 as the leading console in U.S. homes among the latest generation of video-game players. As of June, U.S. consumers bought nearly 10.9 million Wii consoles since it’s introduction, which makes Nintendo top console dog. In fact, the Wii has been the top-selling console in all but one month in the U.S. since it launched, according to research firm NPD Group Inc.

Nintendo is projecting that worldwide, the Wii’s annual sales will surpass the number of consoles that Sony sells for the first time this fiscal year. The formula seems pretty straightforward. Get people actually in the game with motion control and Miis, appeal to all ages and keep the price somewhat reasonable.

According to the latest NPD Group report for game sales in May, this is the fourth month in a row that Nintendo has come out on top for the number 1 AND number two spot for console sales. The Nintendo Wii and the handheld Nintendo DS were the two top-selling hardware units for May, 2008.

Nintendo sold over 675,000 Wii consoles in May and almost 453,000 Nintendo DS’s, which would probably explain all the new colors and designs they have been coming out with lately for the DS. Sony’s Playstation 3 followed with a little under 209,000 units sold and Microsoft sold 186,600 Xbox 360 units during the same period.

Microsoft is touting some new statistics trying to gain some additional momentum for the Xbox 360 game console, stating that in the U.S. they have sold 10 million units. There is no refuting that this is quite an accomplishment, but Microsoft is trying to add some more significance to the 10 million unit mark.

“History has shown us that the first company to reach 10 million in console sales wins the generation battle. We are uniquely positioned to set a new benchmark for the industry, ” said Don Mattrick, senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business in the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft.

NPD has released the year-end sales numbers for non-PC video games in 2007 showing record figures for the industry. The year 2007 brought an impressive 43 percent increase in sales compared to 2006 with a total of $17.94 billion.

Game Consoles
The highlights of the year come as no surprise if you’ve been reading our coverage of game console sales with the Nintendo Wii topping the list of most console units sold at 6.29 million. The Wii spent the year at a lower price-point than rival consoles and caught the attention of a wide range of gamers. Behind the Wii in console sales was the Xbox 360 with 4.62 million units sold in 2007, which was helped out a little bit by the wildly popular Halo 3. Next in line was not Sony’s new Playstation 3 but it’s older brother, the Playstation 2. Sony moved 3.97 million PS2 units in 2007 and 2.56 million PS3s.

Since its release on December 1st in Japan, Wii Fit has become a phenomenon in that country, selling over a million units and virtually completely selling out, much like the Wii itself. Sales of the game have done well, but a general upswing in Wii sales has also resulted, with other titles suddenly flying off the shelves. But will it be a hit here in Lard-Ass North America?

Originally the game was supposed to be released in the first quarter of this year, but Nintendo was not even able to meet the supply in Japan. But now, with a May 20th release, we of the North American continent will hopefully soon be shedding some pounds and getting fitter.

The marketing research firm NPD has turned in their analysis of what the top video game titles and consoles were last month and the news is very good for the industry as a whole. Leading the top in sales of new software was Activision’s “Call of Duty 4″ for the Microsoft Xbox 360 which sold an impressive 1.57 million copies. Nintendo’s “Super Mario Galaxy” came in second place and if you combine the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 sales for “Assassin’s Creed” it would actually take the silver medal. Not coincidentally Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed” has emerged as the best-selling new IP for games in recent years.

Nintendo’s handheld DS gaming device sold an amazing 1.53 million units in November which was enough to give it the top of the chart for hardware sales. In second place was Nintendo’s Wii gaming console with 981,000 Wiis sold followed by Microsoft’s Xbox 360 in third spot with 770,000 units finding homes. Sony moved 577,000 PlayStation Portable to give it fourth place and the price drop in the PS3 convinced 466,000 consumers to go out and buy one of the consoles last month.

Black Friday seems to have had a positive benefit for sluggish sales of not just Sony’s PlayStation 3 but for Nintendo’s Wii system. Over 350,000 Wiis were sold last week, 50,000 more than what was sold the week before that. The Thanksgiving week represents the second-best sales plateau for Nintendo’s latest game console, beaten only by the launch week of the Wii in 2006.

Meanwhile the sales of Sony’s PlayStation 3 increased in November 298% over the sales in October. Part of that dramatic spike in PS3s finding their forever homes must be from Sony’s price drop of the $399 40GB unit. The price drop even had its effect in Japan where the Wii has been the dominant next gen gaming console for consumers: for the first time since the PS3′s launch more of the Sony consoles were sold to gamers than Wiis.

Nintendo is celebrating its first year anniversary for the Wii with more good news. In the first week of release for its heavily anticipated title “Super Mario Galaxy” over 500,000 copies of the game were sold by retailers. This distinction places SMG as the bestselling Wii video game to date. It’s also one of the best reviewed games in Nintendo’s entire history with many publications calling it to be a top candidate for Game of the Year honors.

While Microsoft will likely put out its own press release next week to hype the anticipated big sales of its new IP “Mass Effect” it will also probably try and steal some thunder from SMG’s big sales by pointing out that its flagship title “Halo 3″ sold over 2.7 million copies worldwide within the game’s first seven days of release this past September. To be fair to Nintendo their 500K figure only includes domestic sales of “Super Mario Galaxy” but as PC World’s gaming blog points out its estimates for European and Japanese sales of the game would still peg the title at below 1 million units sold for launch week. So is Mario still as popular worldwide as Master Chief or has a new king of video games finally been crowned?

Black Friday is fast approaching and although the Nintendo Wii has held strong as the leader in U.S. game console sales for the past year it may not be the case for long. When we first heard Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime talk about Wii console production shortages we suspected it was part of a marketing plan to create a greater demand for the consoles. After all, creating a sense of urgency is one of the most common sales tactics around.

Now that we are into Thanksgiving week and one of the biggest retail shopping days of the year is within site, where are all the Wii’s at? I’m starting to think that this is not part of a marketing scheme and that Nintendo really doesn’t have enough, although it is still surprising to me. The company has had a clear lead in console sales all year long and have been under demand the whole time. We’ve been reporting about the lack of availability as far back as January and Nintendo has had almost a year to catch up.