Game Stooge

The Lund Report: June 2011 NPD

• Scribbled on July 16th, 2011 by Jordan Lund
• Filed in Features, Game Genres, NPD, Platforms

NPD sales results for June 2011 are slowly starting to trickle in, here’s what we know so far.

Console:

• Xbox 360: 507,000
• PlayStation 3: 276,000
• Wii: 273,000

Handheld:

• Nintendo DS: 386,000
• Nintendo 3DS: 143,000
• PlayStation Portable: Unavailable

Microsoft seems to be leading all comers with 507,000 consoles sold in the month of June, an 87% jump up from May sales and a 12.24% increase over June of last year. Year to date for the first 6 months of 2011, 360 sales are up 25.89% over 2010 and they’re showing the only growth of all 3 hardware platforms, no doubt due in large part to the system re-design and the Kinect.

At 273,000, the Wii also saw a 15.68% increase from the month before, but this also represents a fairly dismal 35.38% drop compared to this same time last year. We never did get reliable numbers for NDS sales last month, but the June sales also show a 24.42% slide from 2010. The year to date numbers aren’t any better, showing Nintendo posting a 28.95% loss in Wii sales vs. 2010 and the Nintendo DS down a whopping 45% over the same period of time – although we do have two months this year with no reported sales, January and May, so the actual drop should be significantly less than that.

We can figure out the PS3 numbers now by engagng in a little bit of math: the Seattle PI link states that 48% of consoles sold in June were 360′s, we know that constitutes 507,000 units. The Wii sold 273,000. In order for the 360 to have 48% of the market, that means 1,056,000 consles were sold in June. Subtracting the 360 and Wii numbers leaves us 276,000 PS3s sold, putting them in 2nd place for the month, just barely squeaking by the Wii with 26.14% of the market compared to the Wii’s 25.85%.

The lone good news for Nintendo is that 3DS sales finally stopped sliding and ticked up a notch, going from a low of 97,000 in May to 143,000 in June. It’s still not anywhere where sales should be for a new Nintendo hardware platform, but for now it seems as though the bleeding has stopped and the new kid on the block even had a software title enter the top 10! Keep reading to find out which one!

The missing piece of this equation are the numbers of Sony. They failed to report either PS3 or PSP sales, but industry analyst Michael Pachter guesstimated that the PSP moved around 85,000.

The problem with his estimates is that he woefully under-estimated the 360, predicting just 355,000 sales in June which was just about 150,000 less than actually sold. He also overestimated the Wii, predicting 325,000 compared to the actual 273,000. He missed the NDS by 100,000 and really only came close on the 3DS, overestimating by 20,000. In essence, there’s no way he’s right about Sony’s numbers either and he could be way over or way under, there’s no way of knowing at this point.

Software:

• 1) L.A. Noire (Xbox, PS3)
• 2) Duke Nukem Forever (Xbox, PS3, PC)
• 3) Infamous 2 (PS3)
• 4) Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (Xbox, PS3, Wii, NDS, 3DS, PSP, PC)
• 5) Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (3DS)
• 6) Call of Duty: Black Ops (Xbox, PS3, Wii, PC, NDS)
• 7) NBA 2K11 (Xbox, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP, PC)
• Mortal Kombat 2011 (Xbox, PS3)
• 9) Cars 2 (Xbox, PS3, Wii, NDS, PC)
• 10) Just Dance 2 (Wii)

As usual, with the new multi-platform reporting scheme from the NPD, the two top spots are taken by games released for multiple platforms. L.A. Noire and the much maligned Duke Nukem Forever take #1 and #2 respectively, proving no matter how bad a game may be, people will still pony up $60 after waiting 14 years for it. [And the NPD doesn't include Steam sales of Duke Nukem Forever either. - ed.]

Three system exclusives hit the top 10, Infamous 2 for the PS3 at #3, the 3rd re-incarnation of Ocarina of Time, this time on the 3DS and Just Dance 2 for the Wii at number 10. Just Dance 2 just will not go away, hanging on with dogged determination. The #3 position for InFamous 2 represents a new high point for the franchise, but the real surprise is Ocarina of Time. To date just over 800,000 3DS’s have been sold in the US, so the title must have a phenomenal sell-through rate to have cracked the top 10 on it’s own without support from any other hardware platform. Most likely this one title alone was also responsible for the increase in hardware sales.

The rest of the list isn’t that surprising. Black Ops is back again, along with two soul-less kids titles based on movies or toys based on movies. NBA 2K11 is riding high following the close of the basketball season. Mortal Kombat is also hanging on while Portal 2, released on the same day, is nowhere to be seen. Either most of the sales of that title went to Steam (which is not reported by the NPD) or they just dropped off precipitously.

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