The analysts seemed to think April would represent a fairly easy comparison year-over-year for the U.S. games industry. Apparently, it wasn't easy enough, as game sales fell off a cliff, according to the data IndustryGamers just received from The NPD Group. Total industry sales were down 26% to $766.2 million, while software fell 22% to $398.5 million and hardware declined a whopping 37% to $249.3 million. Accessories were also down 9% to $118.4 million. As a result, year-to-date (through April) the U.S. industry is down 11%.
NPD noted that the month represented the "worst year-over-year decline...since July '09, and the fourth largest year-over-year percentage decline ever after September 2000, June '09 and July '09."
NPD industry analyst Anita Frazier told us that the portable market was a big culprit in April. "The portable side of the industry drove more than its fair share of declines this month as that segment contributed 25% of total dollar sales, but accounted for 61% of the decline from last April," she explained. "Last year the DS sold more than 1 million units so that was always going to be a pretty tough number to comp, but even with the decline from last year, the DS was the best-selling hardware system of the month and its closing in on the PS2 as the best-selling hardware system of all time."
She continued, "Part of the decrease from last year can be attributed to Easter shifting. Last year, Easter fell in mid-April so most Easter shopping was accounted for in April sales. This year, that shopping would have fallen in March. So that could account for about $55 million of the decline from last year. Interestingly, the decline in software sales seems to have been driven by catalog titles and March '10 releases which fell off more dramatically in their second month at market than did the March new releases last April. The April '10 new releases actually performed very favorably in aggregate as compared to last April's new releases."
From a software perspective, only two games actually released in April were able to crack the top 10. Splinter Cell: Conviction (an Xbox 360 exclusive) was the best-selling game of the month with 486.1K units sold. The two DS Pokemon games also continued to post solid numbers. You can check out the full top 10 chart down below.
On the hardware side, things weren't so pretty. The DS was the top selling system with 440.8K but that's down from over 700,000 in March. And the Wii was down from 557.5K units in March to just 277.2K units in April. The Xbox 360 and PS3 were nearly tied for the month with just 185.4K units and 180.8K units, respectively. Rounding out hardware with a miserable 65.5K units was Sony's languishing PSP.
We asked Frazier if the Wii shortage situation had anything to do with the lower Wii sales. She responded, "As far as the Wii is concerned, this month's unit sales are fairly in-line with what was sold last July and August. I have heard rumblings on the street about inventory issues, but only Nintendo could clarify that situation. But Wii games account for 4 of the top 10 games for the month, and Nintendo (including DS) has 6 of the top 10."
7 Comments
May 13, 2010
Activision said that the PS3 would outsell the 360 this year but thats not going to happen in the US. However, their prediction was was for both US and UK sales. But the main thing to consider is that US gamers support the 360 very well(the sameway that Japan supports the Wii and PS3 because they were made over there).
So while theres a slight chance that total PS3 sales combined for the US+UK might edge out 360 sales this year, here in the US the 360 will continue to outsell the PS3 for the fourth year in a row. And now that the majority of Sony's console exclusives have already launched this gen, I don't see that trend changing anytime during this generation.
May 13, 2010
Meanwhile, Apple's selling over a million iPod Touch/iPhones a month. And the NPD numbers don't cover digital distribution, or social gaming, or mobile gaming. The real message is that classic retail continues to struggle, but it's no longer the only game in town. Oh, the press releases out of E3 will be interesting this year... watch for some amazing examples of creative writing, wishful thinking, misdirection and sleight-of-hand as they work to convince you that everything's gonna be just great this Christmas.
May 13, 2010
Ps3 will be second in every continent by the end of next year.
May 14, 2010
Stop it with the inventory issues, console makers. Unless it's around a newly launched console or hardware sku, it's pretty much "believability stunted" (aka BS) comm strategy.
May 14, 2010
The PS3 and Xbox 360 will likely be neck and neck in the U.S. as far as hardware sales (still a notable increase on Sony's part). When taking into account the U.K., Europe, PAL and Japan, there's a good chance that the PS3 will outsell the Xbox 360 globally.
And THE 1 2 P, you act like Sony is completely spent on its software releases. Later this year, we have Gran Turismo 5 (their biggest IP) and The Last Guardian coming out. LittleBigPlanet 2 was just announced and the next Uncharted might even attract more attention because of the success of Uncharted 2. This is not to mention other games that haven't been announced - it's WAY too early to be calling things over and done with.
May 14, 2010
You are right David, I forgot about Gran Turismo, a series that nearly each entry has moved atleast ten million units globally. That will undoubtly be Sony's biggest system seller. They definitely have more exclusives(as do all three console makers) but most of those aren't of the magnitude of a GT5, GOW3 and UC2.
July 4, 2010
So what are we talking about here, like a Flash game? Will it be played on your web browser, or on your xbox? If it's a money management game like Cashflow or Monopoly, I think this scheme might actually work.tiffany ring