NPD Hardware: Drops All Around but Xbox 360 Still Going Strong

As we reach the middle of the month, the NPD group has just revealed its statistics regarding how everything related to video games sold in the past month. Meant to record the highs and lows of the gaming industry and to declare the winners in the console war, these charts serve to enlighten us as regards the latest trends on the market.

As the company announced its results for the month of July, there are certainly no surprises, as yet another drop was recorded overall, both in terms of hardware and software combined. The recorded overall drop was of 29%, as sales of up to $849 million have been recorded in the United States of America.

In terms of hardware, the NPD numbers aren't very rewarding to all of the companies involved, as drops were registered across the board, with only the Xbox 360 managing to maintain a growth in year-to-date sales. With the sales down 37 percent year-over-year, the amount of money recorded by the NPD group was around $280.94 million.

“Hardware sales have slowed considerably on nearly every platform,” said Anita Frazier, analyst for the NPD group. “The Xbox 360 is the only console system showing a unit sales increase year-to-date, while the Nintendo DS has the highest sales of all hardware platforms both for the month, and year-to-date.”

Here are the official numbers:

Nintendo DS: 538,900
Nintendo Wii: 252,500
Microsoft Xbox 360: 202,900
Sony PSP: 122,800
Sony PlayStation 3: 121,800
Sony PlayStation 2: 108,000

After revealing the statistics, Frazier said that growth in the industry this year would be quite hard to achieve, but not something that cannot be done: “In order for the industry to come in flat or slightly up for the total year, the back five months of the year have to come in 11% (or more) higher than the last five months of last year. There are some big titles set to be released over the next several months, including Madden this month, which should help spur sales. The worst comps should be behind us, and looking beyond August we have The Beatles: Rock Band, Halo 3: ODST, and of course, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to look forward to.”

Overall, it wasn't a great month for gaming, but it will most certainly pick up as the big blockbusters are starting to arrive in August.