The October sales have recently been released by the NPD Group showing that Nintendo has basically wiped the floor with the competition for yet another month and as a follow-up, Nintendo of America’s marketing chief George Harrison spoke with Next Gen about how Nintendo expects to keep the momentum going, plus how Third Parties need to step up and start providing higher quality games.

Whilst the results of the September sales period saw Microsoft’s Xbox 360 lift itself above the competition, including even the Wii, thanks to the three million-plus sales of flagship title ‘Halo 3′, Nintendo has reclaimed the lead for October, with both the Wii and DS shooting back up to take the No.1 and No.2 chart positions. Below are the hardware results for the month, showing just how much the Xbox 360 fell from its 528,000 sales from September, as well as the PlayStation 3’s performance this time compared to 119,000 sales for that month as well:

Hardware Sales - October, 2007

1.) Wii - 519,000 [ Total Sales: 5,038,685 ]
2.) Nintendo DS - 458,000
3.) Xbox 360 - 366,000 [ Total Sales: 7,092,151 ]
4.) PlayStation Portable - 286,000
5.) PlayStation 2 - 184,000
6.) PlayStation 3 - 121,000 [ Total Sales: 1,980,649 ]

It is quite apparent that consumers are pre-empting the Christmas mayhem by making their purchases early and Harrison talks about how Nintendo is hoping to maintain its current momentum, discussing the amount of consoles ready to hit the shelves over the next few months and several other topics. In terms of sheer momentum, Harrison believes the best strategy is to first “try to get as much hardware into the market as possible,” and this has been a clear goal for Nintendo as it recently announced it would be producing 1,800,000 units per month worldwide to help keep up with demand. Despite this increase in supply, though, Nintendo is “still expecting some shortages in December. But we’re not going to be pulling back on our marketing. So even though we’ll be selling everything we can get, we’ll continue full-blast with our outreach through PR, and through paid advertising and other things.”

With Super Mario Galaxy now out across all territories and selling out fast (other than in Japan, where only around 300,000 units of the initial 500,000 stock have been inexplicably sold), and definitely Nintendo’s biggest game of the year, the demand is not about to fade away anytime soon.

But Wii is not the only console people are after right now, since the DS cracked over 450,000 in the US alone and continues to top the UK and Japanese hardware charts on a weekly basis. Just when you think the hype will die down, “hundreds of thousands of people [come] out of the woodwork to buy them every month.” And as Harrison says, people may be shocked at how well the touch-screen portable is doing, but “there’s still a huge amount of potential left. We’re barely at half of the life-to-date sales that we achieved on our last generation of Game Boy. When we talk about the expanded audience, we’re really talking about people who have not necessarily bought a Nintendo DS. So we think there’s a huge additional potential.”

Moving back onto the topic of Wii, traditionally there is a large drop-off in terms of hardware sales after the holiday period as people settle back into their daily routines and play whatever they picked up during the festive season. However, as Harrison points out “what really surprised us in 2007 was that the holiday sales after the launch of Wii didn’t slow down in February or March. What caused us to fall behind was supply. We believe that through the expanded audience, the price point of $250 for the Wii system with Wii Sports, people can jump in at any time.” And this will definitely be helped by strong titles on the horizon, such as Super Smash Bros. Brawl in February, plus the heavy-hitting duo of Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit.

Whilst Nintendo may have a strong line-up, though, the company feels that Third Parties need to pull their finger out and start producing higher quality games for the Wii audience, rather than mere cheap cash-ins. When asked if Third Parties are becoming less wary about bringing games to the Wii, Harrison stated:

“We think so. Certainly there’s a strong lineup of third party titles, and we’re trying to encourage them to make them. But we’re also trying to encourage third parties to take the time and effort to make something unique, not just to sort of throw something out on Wii because the Wii’s the fast-selling system. I think the ones that have spent the most time in the box are the ones that are going to be the most successful this holiday.”

Finishing off the interview, he was asked about the reported increase in PlayStation 3 since the recent price-drop and new hardware model, but proved bullish on the issue, stating “We don’t focus a lot on the competition. It appears to us that Sony and Microsoft are fighting over the same customer and swapping market share. Our performance seems to be independent of those two.”

For those that are interested, the NPD Group also released some software figures

Software Sales - October, 2007

1.) Halo 3 (360, Microsoft) - 433,800 [ Year Total: 3,700,000 ]
2.) Guitar Hero III (360, Activision) - 383,200
3.) Guitar Hero III (Wii, Activision) - 286,300
4.) Guitar Hero III (PS2, Activision) - 271,100
5.) The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (NDS, Nintendo) - 262,800
6.) Wii Play (Wii, Nintendo) - 239,700 [ Year Total: 2,500,00 ]
7.) Half Life 2: Episode 2 The Orange Box (360, EA) - 238,400
8.) Guitar Hero III (without guitar) (PS2, Activision) - 231,700
9.) FIFA Soccer 08 (PS2, EA) - 129,700
10.) More Brain Training (NDS, Nintendo) - 116,900

NEW) Guitar Hero III (without guitar) (360, Activision) - 107,700
NEW) Guitar Hero III (PS3, Activision) - 105,800
NEW) Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions (PSP, Square Enix) - 98,100
NEW) Ace Combat 6 (360, Bandai Namco) - 92,500
NEW) Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (PS3, Sony) - 74,500
XX) Metroid Prime 3 (Wii, Nintendo) - 45,200
NEW) Project Gotham Racing 4 (Xbox 360) - 38,300

Year Totals, All Formats, All Versions

• Madden NFL 08 - 3,200,000
• Guitar Hero 2 - 2,800,000
• Pokémon Diamond - 2,100,000
• Pokémon Pearl - 1,500,000
• Spider-Man 3 - 1,400,000
• Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock - 1,400,000