NPD Hardware: Industry Grows, Nintendo Dominates

The figures coming from the NPD Group, which tracks hardware and videogame sales in the United States, show that the industry has had the best month of December ever, growing by about 4% year over year, going from 5.32 billion dollars to 5.53.

Hardware performed better when compared to 2008, with an increase in sales of 16%, while sales of videogame-related software dropped by 7% in the same month. Sales of accessories continued to rise reaching 760.2 million dollars for the month of December 2009. The small growth has been a surprise as most analysts were expecting the market to actually continue its decline when compared to 2008.

The best sold console in the best December for the videogaming industry has been, no surprise here, the Nintendo Wii, which moved an impressive 3.81 million units. Second spot also went to Nintendo, with the DS line managing to sell 3.31 million units.

Despite the fact that the Wii seems to be slowing down, the gap to the other home gaming consoles is still pretty big, with the PlayStation 3 from Sony succeeding in taking third place with 1.36 million units sold, a lot more during the same month in 2008, while the Xbox 360 is close behind in fourth, at 1.31 million units sold. The PlayStation Portable handheld from Sony has managed to get 654,700 units to gamers while the PlayStation 2 is still alive, selling 333,200 consoles during one month.

Anita Frazier, who is an analyst working for the NPD Group, stated that “December marks just the fourth month of the year where the industry saw an increase over last year. January and February were both up, and since the decline that began in March, only September experienced growth.” She added that the rebound, which took place in December might be the first sign of a sustained recovery period that would begin in 2010.