Video-Game Player Sales Fall 6%; Nintendo Keeps Lead (Update4)

Video-game player gross sales drop 6
percent on a weekly footing last calendar month in the U.S., with Nintendo
Co.'s Wii keeping its Pb over Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 and
Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3.

Game gross sales rose 18 percentage on that basis, research worker NPD
Group Inc. inch Port Washington, New York, said today in an e-
mailed statement. The company adjusted its monthly numbers
because there were fewer merchandising years in January 2008.

Nintendo, based in Kyoto, diverted some Wiis and transcripts of
the game ''Super Knock Mario Bros.'' to Japan, hurting gross sales for
the month, Wedbush Lewis Henry Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter said. Consumers purchased 274,000 Wii consoles, compared with 436,000
last year, according to NPD figures. Gross Sales drop 21 percentage from a
year earlier on a weekly basis.

''They suddenly got scaled back on supply,'' Pachter said in
an interview. ''One calendar month is hard to name a trend.''

PlayStation 3 outsold Xbox 360, with consumers buying
269,000 consoles, compared with 230,000 Microsoft machines.

Stores of the Xbox 360 also were short because of higher-
than-expected gross sales during the vacation season, Microsoft
spokesman Saint David Dennis said in an interview. The company is
trying to increase production at mills in People'S Republic Of China to address
the problem, he said.

PlayStation Gains

PlayStation 3 benefited from the Xbox deficit and from
better games that have got made the comfort more than attractive than a
year earlier, said Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Lazard Capital
Markets in San Francisco. The PlayStation 3 come ups with a Blu-ray
DVD player, a characteristic that may be helping sales, he said.

''This is definitely shaping up to be a discovery year
for us,'' Jack Tretton, main executive director military officer of Sony Computer
Entertainment of America, said in a statement.

Nintendo of United States President Reggie Fils-Aime said in a
statement demand for the Wii goes on to transcend supply.

A version of Activision Inc.'s battle game ''Call of Duty 4:
Modern Warfare'' for the Xbox 360 was the best-selling title with
330,900 transcripts sold. Nintendo's ''Wii Play'' was 2nd at
298,100, NPD said.

Microsoft, located in Redmond, Washington, drop 46 cents to
$28.50 today in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. Sony drop 1.8
percent to 4,830 hankering as of 1:13 p.m. on the Tokio Stock Exchange. Nintendo dropped 0.6 percentage to 50,800 hankering in Osaka.

To reach the newsman on this story:
Michael White Person in Los Angeles at .