NPD Tallies US Video Game Revenue in Jan 12', Consoles Still Dying - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 09 February 2012 / 8,695 Views
NPD has tallied US video game revenue for January 2012. The US video game industry continues to decline rather rapidly as the hardware market approaches full saturation with the current machines. Software is also declining rather rapidly, as many users pick up new games only with new hardware. Hardware and software revenue both fell nearly 40% from last January, and enormously from December - although the December to January drop is fairly typical.
The total figure for January 2012 is below January 2004, which does not bode well for the rest of the year.
Based on revenue declines, and Microsoft's press-release ('X360 sold 270,000 for 49% share') I've estimated US hardware sales for January 2012 at the following levels - down horribly in all cases, but held up a bit overall by the 3DS.
You can play around with the figures a bit until more data comes in, but it's hard to imagine either Wii or PS3 below 100,000 units. January hardware sales are typically 12-18% of December hardware sales. Wii or PS3 could be at something like 160,000 though, with the other device at 120,000 based on Microsoft's statement. My hunch is the split is probably a tiny bit in favor of Wii, simply because PS3 hasn't had any substantial games released since mid-November, while Wii had Zelda in late November and Fortune Street in December.
Software sales for the month remain heavy on shooting and dancing games, the genres that are still growing as most others fall off substantially on the consoles.
This article will be updated if more data comes in, but it certainly looks like the usual rule of the US industry is kicking in, as you approach one console per US household from a generation, everything starts to fall off a cliff. The US market now has over 90m consoles for 120m households - so it isn't too surprising to see major drops for the second month in a row (Dec hw was -25% on a unit basis).
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The price breaks were still in effect in December at most retailers, and sporadically through January. What else you got? I guess the other issue is previous PS3 price cuts (and the original Wii price cut) lifted hardware for months and months, while the 2011 cuts did virtually nothing. PS3 cost $400 for half of the March 2010 year, $300 for the rest - now its $250-$300 for most bundles and sales will be flat or down. I'm not buying price cuts as a boosting element any longer. Same goes for X360 when Kinect and X360 have been continuously discounted at retail for months (and Wii too really).
Why do people act surprised that game sales are down? We're just past Christmas, in a bad economy and the consoles are getting older. It doesn't mean consoles are dead or a thing of the past. It just means it coming closer to time for new ones!
Probably should update the article, as we now know the Ps3 sold > 160K (3DS sales).
Lol, just reread the article, so much for the split being in favor of the Wii because of Zelda. :-P
Dang, consoles are down a lot this year. They better be getting ready for a new gen, because this one isn't lasting that much longer. Everybody is down and the only business that increased/stayed the same was Nintendo's Handhelds. That 10 year life cycle bulls*** seems rather unrealistic now doesn't it sony?
It seems it's time to release next-gen in late 2012 and not 2013, isn't it ?
If Xbox sold the most... wouldn't that make handhelds also "dying" ?
Even Xbox numbers dont look that good... And when we are talking about USA something is wrong...
Typical way its calculated is 2.5 people per home, and the US has around 310 million people.
Are there really only 120m households in the US?
Seems pretty low to me.
It depends what you count as a house.
120m households, but quite a few formerly Wii households "upgrading" to 360. Still as a total proportion of households the upgraders are not going to be very big, and they won't drive many sales. It's possible that 360 might do about 5 million in the USA this year. Wii will obviously die. PS3 perhaps 3 million. Wii U may sell about the same as 360. I guess this late in the console cycle rest of the world becomes more significant, given there's well over 120m households and so the world is further from saturation than the USA. Of course proportionally there are fewer households that can afford to buy game consoles.
People say they are upgrading but to me that would mean long-term total consoles sales would be flat in the US and they aren't - they're shrinking too because people who bought Wii (and arguably PS2) haven't bought anything else yet. The three consoles used to do 18-20m, and the past 12-months were a bit under 16m in the US market.
i don't know why, but i feelt that the extra Xbox360 sales it's getting are actually downgrades from Wii Remote to Kinect, and its mainly kids if you understand what i mean
so Microsft was smart to attract Nintendo's audience, don't tell me the 10m+ kinect users are ''mature hardcore'' as they call them
Look at nov dec jan together. Jan this year vs jan last year is apples and oranges. November had a monster price break on the 360 and that moved a TON of units. All it did was shift units of people who would have bought it later.
This is not good analysis.
