USA Retail Sales Preview for July 2010
by Jacob Mazel, posted on 10 August 2010 / 2,685 Views
NPD will be releasing data for the performance of the USA videogame market this Thursday at 6:30 PM Eastern Time. The data covers the four weeks ending July 31, 2010. Based on Vgchartz data for the same period, we expect NPD to report the following information.
July Overview
June was a five week month, while July was a four week month. Not surprisingly, all monthly hardware totals dropped from June. A drop off of 20% would indicate steady sales over less time. However, during July all hardware rates dropped off by more than 20% - indicating that slowing weekly sales rates AND the change in time length explain the hardware dropoff for the month.
Hardware sales are down a bit against last July, primarily because DS, PSP, and PS2 fell by nearly 300,000 units combined. Large increases in PS3 and X360 hardware sales and steady Wii sales could not offset the decline. With hardware down, and selling at lower prices than last year, and quiet software sales, industry revenue dropped off a bit year over year. One caveat - Nintendo just said Wii has topped 30 million in the United States, and NPD had Wii at 29.57m through June 2010 - so the Wii may be higher than we have it if Nintendo's internal data aligns well with NPD data. Furthermore, Starcraft II is not included in this data - and went a long way toward slowing the 'video game' portion of the "gaming" market for the month given how well it sold.
| USA VG $ | July 10' | July 09' |
| Hardware | $243.80 | $280.94 |
| Software | $416.50 | $436.99 |
| Accessory | $140.00 | $130.97 |
| Total | $800.30 | $848.90 |
Overall hardware revenue is likely to continue declining, as PS3 is likely to turn negative during August-October as it laps the 2009 price cut and Slim launch. DS, PSP, and PS2 could be down year over year for the rest of the year too - leaving X360 and Wii to pick up the slack - something which won't happen with those consoles likely to be down at least once between now and the end of the year.
Software sales were pretty quiet for July, especially for new titles. NCAA and Crackdown 2 were the only major openings for July. Of the top thirty games, ten were for Wii, nine were for X360, six were for PS3, and five were for DS. NCAA wasn't that far off from the top thirty for PS2, so it will be interesting to see if / where Madden PS2 charts in August. Dragon Quest IX was actually the major debut for Nintendo systems this month, selling over 70,000 units in the United States. Excluding Wii Sports, there were six DS titles, and nine titles for Wii in the top thirty. On another bundled software note, Madden figures may actually end up looking a little funky next month in the NPD data, as Madden is being bundled with some PSPs and PS3s. Since new releases generally didn't chart in July, a number of older games continue to hang on to top thirty placement - but they'll likely be pushed off by Madden next month.
Lego Harry Potter has quietly become a major hit this month - with sales over 500,000 between the versions pictured and those off the chart. Otherwise, Red Dead Redemption and Super Mario Galaxy 2 are still holding well from May - but most titles from the first half of 2010 are now rapidly declining. What is interesting is that a handfull of the best games from 2006-2009 continue to hold up well - 13 games in the top thirty (excluding Wii Sports) are from 2009 or earlier and several games like NSMB DS just missed the cut off. Next month should see more new titles in the top thirty - but we'll have to wait to know for sure.
Contact Vgchartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com
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