14 DAY TRIAL // The NPD Group numbers for May showed up last week, after a short delay, and they prove the videogame industry slid down 5% when compared to the same month last year. But despite the gloomy news, the three big companies that make both hardware and videogames raced to put a positive spin on the news.
Cammie Dunaway, who is the executive vice president of sales and marketing at Nintendo of America, stated, “These May results show that consumers are really responding to the value proposition of our new Wii configuration that now includes Wii Sports Resort and a Wii MotionPlus accessory. May also saw the launch of two great games: Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Wii and Picross 3D for Nintendo DS. They preface the steady drumbeat of big games for the second half of 2010 we announced at the E3 Expo that will keep fans engaged and having fun.”
Nintendo managed to take four of the ten leading positions in the software charts, as offered by the NPD Group for North America. Super Mario Galaxy 2 was in third overall and second when multiple versions are not counted, New Super Mario Bros. arrived in sixth place, followed by Wii Fit Plus at seven and Pokemon Soul Silver at eight. The company performed much better on the hardware side, where the Nintendo DS family holds first place while the Wii beat the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.
Mrs. Dunaway did not talk about the rather lackluster performance of Super Mario Galaxy 2, which only sold a little over 500,000 copies in its first month. By comparison, the first game that brought Mario to outer space, maybe benefiting from a better launch space in November 2007, succeeded in breaking the 1 million mark. The relative weak sales of the sequel might also be down because of character fatigue on the part of gamers who have lost the sense of uniqueness linked to Mario adventures.