14 DAY TRIAL // The videogame industry only managed to grow by 9% in August compared to last year. This is one of the smallest increases this year and shows that the overall economic performance in the United States might be finally catching up with gamers and videogaming companies.
The industry has had revenues of 1.08 billion dollars, with hardware accounting for only 384.59 $, which means that the hardware side has grown even slower than the software one.
When it comes to hardware, Nintendo still manages to stay on top. The Nintendo DS shipped more than 500,000 units in one month in North America and held on to the top spot, with the Wii coming second with 453,000 units sold. The PlayStation Portable from Sony managed to be third, although it only got a bit over 250,000 consoles to customers, which means that it has a gap of approximately 300,000 units to its main competitor.
The Xbox 360 sold better than the PlayStation 3, with sales of 195,200 units compared to 185,400 units, while the Playstation 2 still manages to sell more than 100,000 consoles every month.
Madden NFL 09, created by EA Tiburon and published by EA Sports, managed to sell so much that it dominated the first three spots of the videogame chart. The Xbox 360 version of the game shipped 1 million copies in August; the PlayStation 3 version sold close to 650,000 games and the PlayStation 2 version came in third, with sales reaching 420,000. The Wii Fit is still going strong almost nine months after launch, coming into fourth place while Mario Kart Wii and Wii Play are fifth and sixth.
August is by definition a slow month, with most of the high profile game releases coming in the fall season and just before Christmas. The price cut of the Xbox 360 means that the coming months might see some interesting shifts in the hardware and software charts.