IndustryGamers - Informing the Games Industry

NPD: Game Sales Drop 16% as Madden, Batman, Wii Sports Resort Dominate

Posted September 10, 2009 by James Brightman

IndustryGamers has just received the latest NPD sales data for the month of August, and as was expected, the industry has suffered yet another down month – its sixth in a row. Total industry sales fell 16% to $908.72 million, putting year-to-date sales at $9.07 billion (which is 14% behind 2008's record sales pace). Software sales were down 15% to $470.32 million while hardware plummeted 25% to $297.60 million. 

NPD analyst Anita Frazier commented to IndustryGamers, "While we don't predict monthly sales, I wasn't necessarily surprised to see a decline, but I had expected perhaps a softer decline than what materialized. That said, there are some great releases for the remainder of the year and I would expect to see some increases. Whether it will be enough to render the year flat to last year remains to be seen, and in fact the back four months would have to be up 14% in aggregate for that to happen, which seems like a stretch. Not impossible, but definitely a stretch."

Accessories actually did see a very small increase (2%) to $140.81 million, which is attributable to Wii MotionPlus attachments fueled by Wii Sports Resort interest (Nintendo previously said Wii MotionPlus already sold 2 million in the U.S.). Frazier told us, "The Wii MotionPlus sold very well.  It was the top-selling accessory item for the month, selling 776K units.  So I would say it had a big impact on the accessory category results for the month."

Hardware was once again dominated by the Nintendo DS (DS Lite and DSi), which sold 552.9K units. The Wii was the top selling console with 277.4K units sold, which was only marginally better than Xbox 360 at 215.4K and PS3 at 210K. It would definitely seem like the momentum for Wii is fading, and a price cut would be helpful at this point.  Rounding out hardware, PSP sold 140.3K units and PS2 sold 105.9K units.

Frazier noted to us that PS3 definitely benefited from the price cut near the end of August: "Yes, I think we're seeing an impact from the price cut and the new model that made it to store shelves in the end of August.  It will be fun to see what a full month of the new pricing does for both the 360 and the PS3 when September sales are released on October 15th." 

She didn't see the Wii hardware trend as necessarily negative, however. "You know, I was looking at monthly unit sales trends for a variety of platforms over time, and honestly, the sales of Wii are pretty close to where the PS2 was selling at a comparable point in its lifecycle," she countered. "So my take is that although not living up to last year's levels, it's still selling well. A lot of folks are speculating about a price cut for the system, and while history shows time and time again that price cuts always positively impact unit sales, only Nintendo can judge whether it makes sense for them to do so."

On the software side, EA Sports' Madden NFL 10 took top honors and sold 1.9 million copies across five SKUs. The Wii version didn't make the top 10 list; that's probably pretty disappointing to EA, which continues to redesign Madden to try to appeal to the Wii audience.

Nintendo's Wii Sports Resort also put up solid numbers, selling another 754,000 copies in August. Nintendo previously announced the game had surpassed 1 million sold in the U.S. but combining the game's 500K sold in its first few days in July with 700K+ in August puts it around 1.25 million sold.   Batman: Arkham Asylum also did well, coming in fourth and fifth on Xbox 360/PS3, combining for almost 600K sold. One report suggests the game has hit 2 million worldwide.

Here are the top 10 best selling games of August, ranked by units:

James Brightman has been covering the games industry since 2003 and has been an avid gamer ever since the days of Atari and Intellivision. He was previously the EIC of GameDaily Biz.