14 DAY TRIAL // The NPD Group has revealed sales data for the month of December 2010 for both hardware and software categories, showing that the Nintendo DS is the biggest selling game consoles while Call of Duty has managed to take home the video game number one.
Overall the industry has gone down by 6 percent when compared to December 2009 in the all important month before Christmas, with the decrease for the entire year hovering around the 5% mark, with the value standing a little over 5 billion dollars.
Hardware sales stand in at 1.84 billion dollars, a decrease of 16 percent over the same period of 2009, mostly because of lower sale prices for all consoles and a rapid decrease in the presence of the Nintendo Wii.
The Nintendo DS led sales for the month, managing to go over the overall installed base of the PlayStation 2, with the company saying that actual sales came in at 2.5 million units in December.
Nintendo also says that it has managed to move 2.36 million devices during December, which is a decrease of more than a third over the same period in 2009, but still a good number, managing to move more units than the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, which came in at 1.86 million in sales.
Microsoft is saying that this was the best month ever for its console, with growth still registered while the overall market went down.
The PlayStation 3 is reported to have sold 1.21 million units during December, also a decrease year over year.
The NPD Group says that December was “the biggest month for accessories sales in history,” with an increase in sales of 10 percent pushing sales to a value of 853 million dollars.
Kinect was the best-selling accessory for the second month running and also took the same title for the entire year.