When it came to the software unit sales, the U.S. market in 2009 as a whole experienced a year-on-year decline. Although both Nintendo DS and Wii have shown slight increases in software unit sales, they couldn't cancel out the decrease in PS2 and PSP software.

As we compare the software unit sales shares of the three companies, you will notice the increased presence of Nintendo products.

This chart shows dollar-sales transitions, not unit sales transitions, of the U.S. market based on NPD data, which not only include the sales of hardware and software but also the peripherals. When compared with 2004, the U.S. market has grown to be more than twice as large in 4 years. In 2009, however, as NPD has already reported, the U.S. market showed a sales decline due to the decreases in hardware and software sales and to the decrease in dollar sales per unit because of hardware price cuts.

The dollar sales of Nintendo products also did not reach the level of 2008, but due to the larger decline in the sales for products of other platforms, the share for Nintendo products actually increased in the market.

In the graph on your left, we are seeing the dollar sales decline in January-November 2009 time period against the same period in the previous year. The entire market saw a 12% decline, and Nintendo products showed a similar decline of 11%. However, as I explained earlier, both Nintendo DS and Wii showed strong sales momentum in December, which outnumbered December 2008 sales. As a result, when we compare the full year of 2009 to 2008, the decline of Nintendo products' dollar sales was contained to 3% and that of entire market to 8%.

Also according to NPD data, the cumulative software unit sales for the Wii platform reached 178.04 million at the end of December 2009, outnumbering the 164.7 million unit software sales for Xbox360, which launched a year earlier than Wii. Wii has become the platform on which now has the biggest number of software sold among all the existing platforms in the U.S.

Finally, I'd like to discuss Europe next.

Similarly to the U.S., until the year-end sales season showed significant excitement in the marketplace, sales of Wii had not been very good in Europe in 2009. There was even a time when all the three home consoles showed similar sales, and it was when Activision launched its smash hit, "Call of Duty," in mid-November. Because Wii did not show a significant sales increase immediately after the trade price cut in Europe, the atmosphere surrounding the system must have not been very positive until amid the year-end-sales season. Nintendo of Europe launched the Black Wii console in the 3rd week of November. Simultaneously, it launched New Super Mario Bros. Wii. The situation started to change from around this point, and the sales thereafter were close to that in 2008, when great sales results had been achieved.

Looking at other platforms, PS3 showed an increase in 2009 while Xbox360 showed a decline. It is interesting to note that their positions were almost completely reversed between 2008 and 2009.

As for Nintendo DS hardware in Europe, it had shown explosive sales during the year-end-sales seasons in both 2007 and 2008, but 2009 year-end-sales season did not show as large of an uptick. Obviously, however, it was not due to the increases in sales of other platforms. Nintendo DS did not have a very strong software lineup at the end of 2009. Consumers may have compared Nintendo DS with Wii which had several hit titles and, as a result, might have ended up paying less attention to Nintendo DS.

So far, the graphs I was using were reflecting Nintendo's pan-European estimates based upon the sell-thru data gathered by independent research companies in Europe. To make a more detailed analysis including software, I will be showing, from this point on, data only for the UK, France, Germany and Spain, which have been disclosed by the research companies in these 4 countries.

In 2008, the European video game market grew significantly. In 2009, however, the entire market size went back to the 2007 level. Unlike the U.S., sales of both Nintendo DS and Wii, together with a number of the other platforms, decreased.