14 DAY TRIAL // April is a cruel month for videogames, the overall value of sales on the all-important North American market dropping to 766.2 million dollars from just over 1 billion during the same period of last year.
Also, the hardware sector saw a drop both when compared with April 2009 and when put next to the figures posted for March 2010. The overall value stands at 398.5 million dollars, part of the drop being linked to the price cuts all the major console manufacturers implemented in 2009.
The best selling console for the month was the Nintendo DS, which managed to move 440,800 units to customers. The number is pretty good in absolute terms but very small compared with last year, when the Nintendo handheld family sold more than 1 million units to eager customers, most of them of the DSi variety. With company announcing that the new 3DS version of the device will be arriving in less than one year, potential customers might choose to wait rather than invest in a device that will quickly be obsolete.
Second place in the hardware chart also went to Nintendo with the Wii home gaming console, which succeeded in selling 277,200 units, a drop from the 340,000 delivered to gamers in April 2009.
Third place was taken by the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, which posted sales of 185,400, a small increase year over year, the PlayStation 3 from Sony breathing down its neck with sales of 180,800, which rose by more than 42%. The PlayStation Portable only managed to sell 65,500 units. The NPD Group is no longer reporting sales numbers for the PS2.
Anita Frazier, who analyzes the numbers for the NPD Group, said, “Compared to March '10 on an average sales per week basis, all platforms declined between 37 percent and 63 percent. Inventory at retail could be playing a role in some of the systems.”