14 DAY TRIAL // Analysts were talking, as late as this week, about May being a month of growth for the videogaming industry when compared to 2009. The numbers from the NPD Group for North America disprove the idea, with the delayed figures showing that the industry has slumped by about 5 percent when compared to the same period in 2009, reaching an overall value of 823.5 million dollars.
Hardware was the category that performed the worst, with overall sales amounting to just 241.5 million dollars, a drop of 20%. Part of it can be explained by the price cuts that hardware manufacturers enacted in 2009 to increase the attractiveness of their products but the biggest problem is that, despite big software launches like Red Dead Redemption and Alan Wake, console sales have failed to pick up pace.
The Nintendo DS line of handhelds continues to be the best selling piece of gaming hardware in North America, managing to move 383,700 units to players in one month, with Nintendo scoring a one-two as the Wii home console takes second place with 334,800 units. A quick look at May 2009 shows the DS sold more than 633,000 devices while the Wii stood at 294,000.
Third place went to the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, which sold 194,600 units in May, beating the PlayStation 3 from Sony, which stands on 154,500, with both of them seeing increases over last year. The PlayStation Portable handheld is last, managing to sell 59,400.
In spite of the grim comparisons with May 2009, Anita Frazier, who is an analyst with the NPD Group, pointed out that “Although down this month, May sales reflect the third best-selling May on record after May '08 and May '09,” adding that the Xbox 360, through both hardware and software, generated the biggest amount of revenue in North America, while the PlayStation 3 from Sony is the console seeing the biggest improvement when compared to last year.