Both hardware and software have seen a decline in sales

Jul 13, 2012 07:54 GMT  ·  By

The NPD Group has released its figures for the United States market for the month of June, showing an overall decline over the same period of 2011 of no less than 30 percent, with the value of sales dropping to 699 million dollars (572.7 million Euro).

The biggest drop was linked to the hardware space, where the swing since 2011 was of 45%, with the bestselling console award once again going to the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, which has managed to top the chart for the 18th month in a row.

The device has managed to sell 257,000 units during June, which represents a decline of 49 percent when compared to June 2011.

Nintendo says that during the same period the 3DS handheld has managed to increase sales by 8% to reach 155,000 units while the older DS line also delivered 150,000 to players.

The Nintendo Wii has sold another 95,000 devices.

The video game top ten includes:

Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes from Warner Bros. and TT Games Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier from Ubisoft Diablo III from Blizzard and Activision Max Payne 3 from Rockstar and Take Two NBA 2K12 from Take Two and 2K Sports Batman Arkham City from Warner Bros and Rocksteady Pokemon Conquest from Nintendo Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 from Infinity Ward and Activision Battlefield 3 from DICE and Electronic Arts The Amazing Spider-Man from Beenox and Activision

The decline for the software sector has been of 29 percent, with the value coming down to 328 million dollars (268.7 million Euro).

Anita Frazier, who is an analyst with the NPD Group, has stated when the sales numbers were announced, “These sales figures represent new physical retail sales of hardware, software and accessories, which account for roughly 50-60% of the total consumer spend on games.”

She added, “When you consider our preliminary estimate for other physical format sales such as used and rentals at $170 million, and our estimate for digital format sales including full game and add-on content downloads including microtransactions, subscriptions, mobile apps and the consumer spend on social network games at $491 million, we would estimate the total consumer spend in June to be $1.36 billion.”