Report: U.S. Video Game Sales Down 23% in May to $863M

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 12, 2009 - 7:44am.

Port Washington, N.Y. - U.S. spending on video games dropped 23% in May, to $863 million, marking the third straight month of decline and the first month since August 2007 that total sales did not top $1 billion, according to data from market research firm NPD Group. Hardware sales fell 30%, to $303 million. The Nintendo DS led all sales with 633,500 units, followed by the Wii (289,500 units); Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) Xbox (175,000); Sony (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation 3 (131,000), PlayStation 2 (117,000) and PSP (100,400).

"Every category declined versus a year ago with the exception of portable hardware sales which was bolstered by the continued strong sales of the Nintendo DS including both the DSi and the Lite," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

The top-selling game last month was THQ's (NASD: THQI) "UFC 2009 Undisputed," which sold over 1 million units across all platforms.

Other new release titles in the top ten included Electronic Arts' (NASD: ERTS) "EA Sports Active Bundle" for Wii, Sony's "Infamous," Activision's (NASD: ATVI) "X-Men Origins" and Nintendo's "Punch Out."

"While there were some very strong new releases this month along with continued strong sales of evergreen games, this month's top 10 games sold 2.6 million units combined, whereas last year the top 10 sold 3.7 million units," said Frazier.

"Again this illustrates how tough the comparisons are to last year."

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/jztc0 (AP)

http://www.npd.com

Published in DMW Daily, June 12, 2009

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Comments

Decline in sales /income is

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