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NPD Software: Splinter Cell Takes a Stealth Approach to the Top

Lower sales than in 2009

May 14, 2010 23:01 GMT  ·  By
Top of the heap
   Top of the heap

It's a bad April for the videogame industry, the NPD Group, the organization that tracks sales for both hardware and software on the North American market, saying the month saw a drop of 26% over the same period in 2009, which is the fourth biggest ever drop in one year. The overall value of sales has plummeted to 766.2 million dollars from 1.03 billion, the software segment being hit in proportion of 22%. One of the reasons is that Easter, which usually generates a lot of sales, was in March this year.

The biggest videogame of April was Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction for the Xbox 360, which managed to sell 486,100 copies, quite a low number for a first place title.

The PC version of the same game did not break into the top ten. Pokemon Soul Silver for the Nintendo DS took second place with sales of 242,900 units, followed by New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Wii with just over 200,000 units moved to gamers. Pokemon Heart Gold is in fourth with 192,600 units in sales and God of War III, the first placed in the March NPD numbers, took fifth with 180,300.

The NPD Group is no longer offering the actual sales numbers for the games that occupy the positions going from sixth to tenth, but these are: Wii Sports Resort from Nintendo, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 from DICE and Electronic Arts for the Xbox 360, Wii Fit Plus with the Balance Board, Just Dance, and Super Street Fighter IV from Capcom for the PlayStation 3.

It seems that after a March when the PlayStation 3 managed to dominate the chart, April is returning to regular segmentation, Nintendo dominating with 6 titles, and Sony and Microsoft each with two.

Anita Frazier, an analyst with the NPD Group, commented on the news, “A big contributor to the decline in software sales comes from the March '10 new releases, which fell off more dramatically than did last year's March releases. In aggregate, March '09 new releases dropped off by 54 percent in April '09 sales, while this year, new releases in March '10 dropped off by 75 percent in April.”