NPD March: Wii and DS Smash Records, PSP Software Hits the Top 10 - News

by VGChartz Staff , posted on 17 April 2008 / 1,820 Views

NPD Reports March Videogame Sales in the USA

Note: NPD Data for March covers the five weeks ending April 5, 2008.

Jacob Mazel

April 17, 2008

Hardware Summary

NPD released its assessment of the USA videogame market for March earlier today. Nintendo had the top selling platforms, Wii and DS. Wii sold over 720,000 units for the period, a console record outside of a holiday month (November or December) while DS sold a ‘measly’ 698,000. PSP followed in a distant third, selling nearly 300,000 units. Xbox 360 and PS3 virtually tied in NPD’s estimation: at 262,000 to 257,000 units respectively. PS2 hardware was down sharply from last month to 216,000 units, although it is important to remember that the aging beast continues to outsell its supposed successor and Xbox 360 in 2008 US sales according to NPD.

To get a better idea of how sales have changed according to last month, here are monthly and weekly sales for March 2008 vs. February 2008. Because March had five weeks while February had four weeks, this comparison is a more fair way to look at NPD trends:

	March	M Weekly	February	F Weekly	Mar Wk/Feb Wk
Wii	720,000	144,000	420,000	105,000	1.37
DS	698,000	139,600	587,600	146,900	0.95
PSP	297,000	59,400	243,100	60,775	0.98
Xbox 360	262,000	52,400	254,600	63,650	0.82
PS3	257,000	51,400	280,800	70,200	0.73
PS2	216,000	43,200	351,800	87,950	0.49

Wii was the only platform to see increased sales on a weekly basis moving from February to March, which speaks to the strength of Super Smash Brothers Brawl, and Nintendo’s ability to accurately assess demand for the month. Also worth noting are March sales in 2008 compared to March sales in 2007 as seen below. Both Marches had five weeks of sales.

	March 08'	March 07'	Mar 08/Mar 07
Wii	720,000	259,000	2.78
DS	698,000	508,000	1.37
PSP	297,000	180,000	1.65
Xbox 360	262,000	199,000	1.32
PS3	257,000	130,000	1.98
PS2	216,000	280,000	0.77

In this chart, it is clear all platforms are up except for the aging PS2, though clearly Wii and PS3 were up the most in terms of percentage. Since the launches of PS3 and Wii in November 2006 in the USA, NPD platform totals are roughly:

DS	9,966,600
Wii	8,780,600
Xbox 360	6,976,100
PS2	4,777,400
PSP	4,594,000
PS3	4,051,900

Lifetime to date sales stand as follows by NPD for the six platforms in the USA:

PS2	41,661,200
DS	19,130,500
PSP	11,263,700
Xbox 360	9,866,100
Wii	8,780,600
PS3	4,051,900

Xbox 360 will pass 10 million in the USA according to NPD next month, with Wii catching it shortly thereafter if current trends continue.

NPD Software Summary:

	Game	Platform	Publisher	NPD Sales
1	Super Smash Brothers Brawl	Wii	Nintendo	2,700,000
2	Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2	Xbox 360	Ubisoft	752,300
3	Army of Two	Xbox 360	EA	606,100
4	Wii Play	Wii	Nintendo	409,800
5	God of War: Chains of Olympus	PSP	Sony	340,500
6	Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII	PSP	Square Enix	301,600
7	Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock	Wii	Activision	264,100
8	Major League Baseball 2k8	Xbox 360	Take 2	237,100
9	Call of Duty 4	Xbox 360	Activision	237,000
10	Army of Two	PS3	EA	224,900

Nintendo had announced previously that Super Smash Brothers Brawl sold over 800,000 units on its first day of sales, so it is not surprising the game was the top seller. In fact, looking at our NPD preview shows that few surprises existed in software this month. As predicted, PSP had its best showing in months, with two games in the top ten. Xbox 360 continues to sell a lot of software, and PS3 games continue to struggle to hit the top ten because of the small user base.

Vgchartz Data for the Five Weeks Ending April 5 2008:

As stated in the NPD Preview, Vgchartz Americas data (covering more than just the USA) had the following totals most of which are similar to NPD USA data:

	Game	Platform	Publisher	VGC Sales
1	Super Smash Brothers Brawl	Wii	Nintendo	2,346,010
2	Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2	Xbox 360	Ubisoft	635,607
3	Army of Two	Xbox 360	EA	426,149
4	Call of Duty 4	Xbox 360	Activision	423,142
5	Wii Play	Wii	Nintendo	400,822
6	God of War: Chains of Olympus	PSP	Sony	317,974
7	Major League Baseball 2k8	Xbox 360	Take 2	261,014
8	Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII	PSP	Square Enix	271,928
9	Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock	Wii	Activision	262,309
10	Army of Two	PS3	EA	240,246

Hardware	8-Mar	15-Mar	22-Mar	29-Mar	5-Apr	March Tot
Wii	62,535	130,836	224,868	74,923	166,547	659,709
DS	106,117	143,973	155,715	127,845	143,579	677,229
PSP	67,227	63,614	86,635	76,839	87,826	382,141
PS3	67,447	68,103	86,504	71,487	60,074	353,615
PS2	77,188	76,701	100,290	85,656	80,255	420,090
Xbox 360	69,593	72,647	87,699	68,319	56,539	354,797

Stay tuned for next month’s NPD Preview, as we try to determine how Mario Kart Wii and a little game called GTA IV will impact sales trends.

Contact Vgchartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com

32 Comments

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princess (on 21 February 2009)

xb110 (on 11 August 2008)

reptile168 (on 18 April 2008)

@ greeg

Seriously, it's practically said in every article that vgchartz include Canada. Can't you read or you just want to show fanboyism toward your favorite console?

Ishy (on 18 April 2008)

NPD and VGC aren't in Perfect agreement on the hardware sales... NPD PS2=216,000 and VGC PS2= 420,000... BIG DIFFERENCE

Chadius (on 18 April 2008)

Nice, NPD and VGC are in almost perfect agreement here.

Good to see some variety in the top 10 this month.

Sounds like the X360 and the Wii will hit 10 million after April/March release blitz.

hunter_alien (on 18 April 2008)

Software wise most games seems to be a bit undertracked , but its still an awesome job as allways VGC ;) ( yes , Im happy that we finally see 2 PSP games in the top 10 :D quality software sells well on anything :) ) .

TheBigFatJ (on 18 April 2008)

The Wii sold almost 500k units more than the Xbox 360 this month. Reggie's statement that the Wii will pass the 360 in/by June seems very conservative. It looks almost inevitable that it will happen in May.

TWRoO (on 18 April 2008)

^ to go with that this is the weekly average of PS2 + Wii for both months;

Feb: ~194k
Mar: ~187k

which shows a small drop which would be usual from Feb-March.
If this is true it means that the Wii has successfully tapped most of the PS2 market from last gen and as soon as the Wii is in ample supply it can kill the PS2 in the Americas.

TWRoO (on 18 April 2008)

@Greeg, "Blame Canada" (and Mexico)

Regarding NPD, those ps2 numbers seem really odd, why did the PS2 do so well in February then fall so much in March? Unless there was an important game release in February that I have not heard about.

The only other reason I can think of is that the PS2 really is hanging on to the Wii at this point, so it was only doing well in Jan-Feb because the Wii was in severely low supply compared to March, but I wouldn't have thought it affected it so drastically.

macross (on 18 April 2008)

@greeg
Canada!

ironmanDX (on 18 April 2008)

Go PSP!! Its a gresa time to bea psp owner right now.

ZuZayLi (on 18 April 2008)

hmm, so VgC must change the numbers of Smash Bros when I see this thread. There's a difference of 600-700.000 units

Desroko (on 18 April 2008)

This NPD report only covers the US, while VGC's American section covers all of the Americas. That covers most of the discrepancy for most platforms.

greeg (on 18 April 2008)

WHY 360 IS SO FAR OFF FROM NPD LIKE 1.5 MILLION

Xbox 3609,866,100 VG 11,379,390 DIF OF 1,513,290..... 1.5 MILLION

Wii 8,780,600 VG 10,091,986 DIF OF 1,311,386..... 1.3 MILLION

PS3 4,051,900 VG 4,466,068 DIF OF 414168 ..... 0.4MILLION

Sullla (on 18 April 2008)

Really an exceptionally good month for VGChartz tracking, almost complete agreement between VGC and NPD in both hardware and software. That's always a good sign, not because one is necessarily more accurate than the other, but because we can be confident we have a fairly clear picture of the market if both align together. This site has come so far from where it used to be a little over a year ago, it's very impressive indeed. Hats off to ioi and all the other contributers who have helped make it possible. :)

SaviorX (on 18 April 2008)

Wait, I thought the 360 already passed 10 million in the Americas?

FreeTalkLive (on 18 April 2008)

@ Exblackman
According to NPD, SSBB should be right about 3 million in the US but likely over 3 million in the Americas so Vgchartz is 600,000-700,000 lower than NPD when it comes to tracking SSBB.

OriGin (on 17 April 2008)

Why not compare side by side at all?

nordlead (on 17 April 2008)

According to NPD, Wii took 58.11% of the market and it is still sold out everywhere.

nordlead (on 17 April 2008)

Very good job overall by VGChartz. A little high in some areas, a little low in others, but excellent job with hardware and software in general. It will be interesting to see how ioi adjusts stuff if he does at all.

DMeisterJ (on 17 April 2008)

Finally PSP in the top ten software, twice.

See, good games will sell well on that platform.

TheSource (on 17 April 2008)

Darconi, your right that was a mistake. It was supposed to say in 2008, so I fixed it.

Exblackman (on 17 April 2008)

So does this mean that smash bros brawl is already over 3 million sales in just the U.S.

trestres (on 17 April 2008)

Look like COD4 is being overtracked massively, maybe due to adjustments for previous undertrackings, and Smash also looks undertracked. If numbers are gonna get adjusted, then its obviously after Nintendo releases its fiscal year shipment reports.

kingofwale (on 17 April 2008)

wow, NPD actually showed 360 outsold PS3 last month, Maybe gebx does know what he's talking about half the time. :)

dolemit3 (on 17 April 2008)

And don't forget about GT5:P. It should bleep on the top ten SW radar as well.

zeross (on 17 April 2008)

great software for psp .
ff7cc hit 1 million worlwilde with us and japan

darconi (on 17 April 2008)

"Xbox 360 and PS3 virtually tied in NPD’s estimation: at 262,000 to 257,000 units respectively. PS2 hardware was down sharply from last month to 216,000 units, although it is important to remember that the aging beast continues to outsell its supposed successor and Xbox 360."

Uh is that right? PS2 at only 216k but continues to outsell its successor at...257k???

Squall_Leonhart (on 17 April 2008)

Good numbers all round for this time of year! Nice to see PSP software in the chart too :D

estoyloco (on 17 April 2008)

At least there's quite a bit of variety in the Top 10 games.

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NPD March: Wii and DS Smash Records, PSP Software Hits the Top 10 - News

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