As most analysts predicted, March turned out to be a good month for the U.S. video game industry. IndustryGamers has just received the data from The NPD Group, and total industry sales climbed 6% to $1.52 billion. Software sales, driven by several blockbusters, grew 10% to reach $875.3 million for the month. Accessories also climbed 11% to $206.8 million. The one area that saw a decline was hardware, as sales fell 4% to $440.5 million.
NPD industry analyst Anita Frazier explained to us, "There may be inventory shortages playing into it, but frankly, unit sales of hardware were up over 7% versus last year, it's just that prices are down +10% thus total dollar sales declined for hardware. Every single category was up in unit sales for the month compared to last year, which is great performance for the industry. Overall, average retail prices were down 3% so that softened the impact of the increased unit sales when looking at revenue performance."
Regarding accessories, Frazier added, "Accessories had a great month but it was actually the lowest in terms of growth on a unit sales basis, but the average retail price in this category increased so the dollar sales performance was boosted by that as well as more units moving through the register. Among the top 10 items for the month in the accessories category, 6 were controllers for the Wii hardware, and 4 were accessories for the Xbox 360 including Live point cards and controllers."
She concluded, "There were a lot of records and trends this month that were great to see. 8 of the top 10 software SKUs were new items this month, and many launched with considerable introduction month unit sales that were significantly larger than the last launch for the franchise including God of War 3, Battlefield, and Final Fantasy XIII. The two Pokemon SKUs combined to sell nearly 1.8 million units. The PS3 platform contributed the most of all platforms to industry dollar sales performance, driven by stellar software sales. Hardware units were up as I said earlier. There is just really so many good things to point out this month we're still uncovering them in the data."
With March completed, the results show that the U.S. game industry put up $3.96 billion in total sales for the first calendar quarter; that represents a 7% decline from 2009, but there's still plenty of time (and software/hardware releases) to help make up for it as 2010 continues.
From a hardware perspective, Nintendo continued to dominate with the Wii and DS. The DS sold another 700.8K units while the Wii sold through 557.5K units. Microsoft's Xbox 360 placed third with 338.4K units sold. Sony's PS3 followed with 313.9K consoles sold. Rounding out the list were the PSP (119.9K) and PS2 (118.3K).
On the software side, Sony really showed that its PS3 momentum is paying off, as four of the top 10 games were for the PS3. Topping all games for March was the "game of the year contender" God of War III, which sold 1.1 million copies. Square Enix's Final Fantasy XIII also did quite well on PS3, selling 828.2K versus 493.9K on the Xbox 360. Sony's popular baseball game MLB 10 The Show also managed to crack the top 10.
Other software highlights, as outlined by NPD are as follows:
- God of War III bested the introduction of God of War II (GOW2 - 3/07 PS2 launch) by 32 percent.
- Thanks in large part to its multi-platform launch on Xbox 360 and PS3, Final Fantasy XIII is the best launch for any item in the franchise. The next closest was Final Fantasy XII, a PS2 exclusive, which launched and sold 896K units in Nov '06. FFXIII sales in its introduction month were 48 percent greater than that of FFXII.
- In its first month of sales in the U.S., Battlefield: Bad Company 2 bested the launch of Battlefield: Bad Company by +170 percent. Even considering that the first was launched later in its introduction month while BC2 enjoyed nearly a full month of sales, the increase is impressive.
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is now the second-best-selling game of all time, after Wii Play.
And here's the NPD top 10 list, ranked by units:
3 Comments
April 15, 2010
But but wasn't the Wii/DS cycle supposed to "fade meaningfully" in 2010? ROTFL!
April 16, 2010
The Wii's supply chain must have caught up hardware wise (still down over last year) and I think where we're seeing serious slack in the overall industry returns is that certain month-by-month Wii sellers aren't quite as consistent as they have been - I'm expecting the lethargy to come out of that when they release Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M this Summer.
The PS3 may have suffered some shortages this month, but I think it'll be hard for it to be higher than the Xbox 360 every month for one reason: the Xbox 360 has a bundle for $199 and the PS3 does not. So long as the Xbox 360 retains that price advantage in some of its bundles, it will likely outsell the PS3 month to month.
April 20, 2010
The game is selling well though, it'll sell over a million copies. People simply chose the PS3 version over the 360 one for the obvious reasons. Although I know lots of my friends who bought the 360 version because they just don't own a PS3. I've heard nothing but disappointment from them unfortunately but this one is simply seems to have gained a love it/hate it reputation.
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