Game Stooge

The Lund Report: July 2011 NPD

• Scribbled on August 15th, 2011 by Jordan Lund
• Filed in Features, Game Genres, NPD, Platforms

Every month the NPD fails to report hardware, numbers gets more and more confusing. Here’s what we know about July, 2011 (drawing from multiple sources.)

For consoles, the Xbox 360 came in first place with 277,000 units sold and that constituted 43% of all console hardware sold for the month.

Neither Nintendo nor Sony agreed to announce their numbers, but we do know that Michael Pachter is reporting that Wii sales are down 25% from last year, and last years sales were 253,900, that means this year they’re around 190,425, roughly 30% of the market for July. That’s after they cut the price to $150 in the wake of the Wii U announcement.

For the PS3 we have to do some math, if Microsoft’s 277,000 makes up 43% of sales that means that the total sales were around 644,186. Subtract Xbox and Wii sales from that and you get a 3rd place showing of 176,761 for the PS3, roughly 27% of the market.

What this all means, in the grand scheme of things, is that everybody is down from last month and everbody is down from July, 2010. June and July of last year were huge for the 360, which sold 451,700 and 443,500 respectively in those two months. The high sales were due to clearance prices on the old model 360 and the new “slim” version which had just come out on June 18th.

That being said, year to date sales for both the 360 and PS3 are looking good. At 2.7 million for 2011, the 360 is up 14% over last year through July. The PS3, while still in 3rd place with 1.815 million sold is up 0.57%. The Wii, though technically in second place with 1.9 million sold, is showing a 28% drop over the 2.7 million sold through July of 2010.

While all console sales are down from June (Xbox down 45%, PS3 down 35%, Wii down 30%), you can’t really compare June sales to any other month of the year as many students get gaming systems as graduation presents. June numbers will always show a bump from year to year.

We’ve been told that the DS actually was the #1 hardware platform for the month, but nobody except Nintendo knows how much they sold. At least 277,001. 3DS numbers weren’t reported but were supposedly worse than the 143,000 sold last month. No word at all on the PS2 or PSP.

Software:

• 1) NCAA Football 12 (Electronic Arts, PS3, Xbox 360, PS3)
• 2) Cars 2 (Disney Interactive Studios, Nintendo DS, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC)
• 3) Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard, NDS, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC)
• 4) Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game (Disney, 3DS, NDS, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC)
• 5) Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft, Wii)
• 6) Major League Baseball 2K11 (Take 2 Interactive, NDS, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC)
• 7) Zumba Fitness: Join the Party (Majesco, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii)
• 8. Fallout: New Vegas (Bethesda Softworks, PS3, Xbox 360, PC)
• 9) New Super Mario Bros DS (Nintendo, NDS)
• 10) Mortal Kombat 2011 (Warner Bros. Interactive, PS3, Xbox 360)

There were no major software releases in July and as such nothing to really drive sales. Kids games (Cars 2, Lego Pirates of the Caribbean) float to the top. Old standards (Black Ops, Just Dance 2) are hanging on. Fallout: New Vegas jumps back on the list after months due to heavy discounts at retailers like Best Buy. The regular retail on it is now $20 and some places have had it as low as $10.

Missing in action is Catherine, a Japanese puzzle/dating sim which has gained a lot of traction on internet message boards and apparently nowhere else. It sold 78,000 units for the month while Mortal Kombat 9 sold 85K, setting the bar for the “you must be this tall to be on the top 10 this month”.

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