NPD: Nintendo, Modern Warfare 2 Dominance Not Enough to Save November

Well, it looks like the analysts were wrong (certainly not the first time). Most analysts and those in the industry had expected November sales to bounce back, fueled by Modern Warfare 2's $500 million record launch and Black Friday deals. It wasn't to be, however, as NPD data sent to IndustryGamers reveals that total industry sales were down 7.6% to $2.699 billion. In fact, sales in every category were down. Software was down 3.1% to $1.406 billion, hardware was down 13.4% to $1.05 billion, and accessories were down 5.5% to $242.2 million. 

All told, year-to-date industry sales now stand at $14.13 billion, which is down more than 12% compared to 2008's record sales. It's incredibly unlikely now for 2009 not to finish as a down year (purely in terms of retail sales).  NPD analyst Anita Frazier told us, "December would have to be up 36% for the industry to break even with 2008 so yes, I think we're looking at a decline for the full year as compared to 2008. I'm now looking at $20B as the year-end figure for total revenues."

She added, "It's interesting, even with Modern Warfare being so huge, the top 50 titles this month sold 5% less units in total than did the top 50 last November. There was a big drop-off with the music / dance genre as well as compared to last year, but it's important to keep in mind that even with the drop-off, the genre was the third best-selling for the month. Even though I do think there are economic factors at play, I still think the biggest thing to remember is that this year is being compared to an absolutely huge year last year. The industry experienced three consecutive years of big increases - +19% in '06, +44% in '07 and +19% in '08. It's definitely been tricky this year and painful for some but the industry is still exceeding 2007 levels." Frazier added that the music genre declined 60% in dollar sales from last year - DJ Hero was #1 in the genre for the month, while Band Hero was the 24th best title for November.

In terms of hardware, we already knew that Nintendo had a stellar Thanksgiving week. The final November numbers show that 1.7 million DS handhelds were sold and 1.26 million Wiis were purchased as well. Following Nintendo was Microsoft, which sold 819.5K Xbox 360 consoles. Sony was slightly behind, selling 710.4K PS3s, as well as 293.9K PSPs and 203.1K PS2s. 

Regarding hardware, Frazier commented to us, "There was so much promotional activity with hardware that I don't know if anything could have surprised me. Everywhere you turned there were gift cards offered with the purchase of a system, special bundles, and so on. The MW2 Xbox 360 bundle appears to have been really successful. In terms of promotions, hardware promotions seemed to make the grade with consumers far more than software promotions did. Maybe December will be the month we see software sales spike as serious gift-giving shopping takes over."

On the software side, of course Activision Blizzard's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 stole the show. Between PS3 and Xbox 360, the blockbuster title sold 6.07 million copies. Additionally, while most expected the Xbox 360 SKU to outperform the PS3 SKU, the magnitude was perhaps a bit surprising - the Xbox 360 version accounted for roughly 70% of the game's console sales (PC sales are not included in this report). Other games that performed well (not surprisingly) included New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Assassin's Creed II and Left 4 Dead 2.

Here's the NPD November top 10 list (ranked by units sold):