14 DAY TRIAL // The NPD Group has released its sales numbers for the month of March in the United States, showing that when it comes to hardware the newly released Nintendo 3DS handheld has managed to do very well, with close to 400,000 of them getting in the hands of gamers.
The performance is even more impressive when taking into account that the 3DS has reached its number in just five days.
Overall, the video game industry has again lost ground when compared with the same period in 2010, with the NPD Group mentioning that the decline came in at about 4 percent and the overall value stands at 1.58 billion dollars.
The hardware sector did well, mainly thanks to the introduction of the Nintendo 3DS, but the Xbox 360 from Microsoft also contributed, having yet another great month, with sales going up by 28 percent when compared to March 2010, reaching a total of 433,000 for the month, the best of the home console group.
The normal DS was the best-selling piece of hardware overall in the United States and this might mean that, in the long term, the new 3DS might struggle to reach the install base of the older Nintendo handheld.
Sony has not offered any actual sales numbers for the PlayStation 3 or for the PlayStation Portable, but the company says that the brand has seen double digit growth versus the same period of 2010.
Nintendo has said that the Nintendo Wii has also managed to sell more than 290,000 units during the month of March, continuing a long slump that has lead to a lot of talk about a successor.
Spending on accessories, a category which includes the motion tracking add-ons PlayStation Move from Sony and Kinect from Microsoft, has increased by 13 percent, reaching a value of 241 million dollars.