14 DAY TRIAL // The NPD Group has released its sales data for April and it seems that the value of the videogames market is at the moment a little over 1 billion dollars. Overall, the videogames industry slid 17% when compared with the same period of 2008. However, readers must keep in mind that April 2008 saw an increase of almost 50% over April 2007, mainly because of the release of games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Mario Kart Wii.
Anita Frazier, who is an analyst with the NPD Group, stated that “This year's performance still represents the second-best performance for the industry in the month of April, besting April 2007, which is the previous second-place holder, by 26 percent.” Apparently, the year over year comparisons will look better during May, as the release schedule for 2009 from the big publishers kicks into high gear.
Hardware sales only went down by about 8% to reach 391.8 million dollars. The Nintendo DS handheld remains the best sold platform, breaking the 1 million sales barrier due to the release of the DSi, while the nearest competitor is the Nintendo Wii, which has managed to move around 340,000 units.
The Xbox 360 has again beaten the PlayStation 3 in terms of sales but this is only the beginning of the bad news for the main Sony platform. Even the old PlayStation 2, which has seen a price cut to a 99-dollar price point, has beaten the PS3, with 172,000 units sold compared with 127,000 consoles moved to customers (nice symmetry there). The PlayStation Portable is bringing up the rear, selling about 116,000 handhelds, which basically means that its rival, the DS, outsold it by about 9:1.
It's interesting to note that the Nintendo Wii has sold less than half of the numbers registered during the month of April last year. One of the reasons could be the limited attraction power of the videogames currently released for the Nintendo home console but another one might be a saturation of the market.