14 DAY TRIAL // In a month when the value of the videogames industry in the United States, the biggest market in the world, went down by a threatening 17%, the Nintendo Wii continued to be the best sold console, again selling better than the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 combined.
The NPD Group, which is watching the videogames industry, says that the value of the sales in March went down to 1.43 billion dollars, 17% lower than in the same period of last year. It is the first time since September 2008 when the market shrank.
Even if the numbers are grim, Anita Frazier, who is an NPD analyst, stated that “While it might be tempting to jump to the conclusion that the sky is starting to fall on the video games industry given this month's results, it's important to remember that two very big things are different this year than last. First, Easter fell in March last year whereas it fell in April this year, and last March included the release of Super Smash Bros.: Brawl, which went on to become the fourth best-selling game in 2008.”
The biggest fall was in hardware, which went down by 18% in overall value. The Nintendo Wii was again the best sold console, moving 601,000 units in one month, followed closely by the Nintendo DS, which sits at 563,000 console sold.
The Xbox 360 again performed better than the PlayStation 3, selling 330,000 units to 218,000. The PlayStation Portable managed to only marginally outsell the PlayStation 2, by 168,000 units to 112,000.
Taking a look at the sales for last year, it's clear that only the Xbox 360 has registered a rise in year over year sales, which means that the world wide economic recession is beginning to bite into the sales of gaming consoles.
The NPD representative added that “If there was one area that surprised me this month, it was hardware sales. While it's not unusual for March hardware sales to be lower than February, I thought we'd see higher unit sales on most platforms.”