14 DAY TRIAL // It's been a fairly quiet month for consoles sales in the United States as the Nintendo DS handheld continues to be the best selling gaming device tracked by the NPD Group. The Nintendo platform, which now includes the XL model, one that comes with a bigger screen than the DS Lite and DSi, managed to sell 700,800 units in one month, which is well above the numbers it posted during the same period of last year.
Second place in the hardware sales chart was also snapped by Nintendo with the Wii home console, which moved 557,500 devices to gamers, below the level of March 2009 but still pretty good. The Xbox 360 from Microsoft is in third place, with sales of 338,400, essentially flat year over year. The PlayStation 3 from Sony might just be the big winner of the month. A price cut and a new Slim model helped the console to reach sales of 313,900 units, which is about 50% better than in March 2009. The performance of the PlayStation Portable continues to be underwhelming with 119,000 handhelds moved while the PS2 is close behind with 118,300.
Overall, the videogaming industry managed to grow by 6% year over year, which is quite good news after a year when an industry which was once considered recession proof saw some significant drops. The total value of sales reached 1.52 billion dollars, but when looking at hardware specifically, there's a drop of about 4% to 440.5 million, which can be attributed to the price cuts that took place in the fall of 2009.
With the Nintendo Wii console still leading the home console pack and the devices from Microsoft and Sony basically neck on neck, the current dynamics will probably remain pretty much the same until the fall, when the industry will see the launch of Project Natal from Microsoft and the PlayStation Move from Sony, two motion tracking devices that will change the way players approach games.