14 DAY TRIAL // The NPD Group, which tracks both hardware and videogame sales on the United States market and launches monthly sales reports, has announced that it will be delaying the outing of its data for the month of May for up to three full weeks as the information technology infrastructure of the company is undergoing what is described as being “a significant upgrade.” It's not clear whether after this delay, the reports will continue to arrive on the same schedule as before.
A representative from the NPD Group told trade publication Gamasutra that “This is long overdue, and is being done to better serve all of our clients and research partners.” The NPD Group is handling a lot of data coming out both from surveys and from sales tracking and as the volume increases, more computing power is needed to make the best of the figures received.
The May figures were widely seen as significant for the videogame industry especially after the gloomy picture painted by April, when it saw a drop in revenue of more than a quarter over the same month in 2009. The fact that Easter was celebrated in March might be a reason but it seems that the overall economic slowdown is still affecting the industry, which, at one point, was described by analysts as “recession proof.”
Since the launch of the Slim version and the accompanying price cut, the PlayStation 3 from Sony has managed to almost catch up with the Xbox 360 from Microsoft in terms of sales, making for a pretty exciting few months for market watchers.
Meanwhile, the Nintendo Wii has seen a slowdown, despite a price reduction, while the Nintendo DS sales were set to see the first effects that the announcement of the 3DS would have on the Nintendo handheld family. Sadly, the excitement and analysis will have to wait for a while.