Switch Best-Selling Console in the US in Q1 2022, Xbox Series Had 'Incredible Q1' - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 04 May 2022 / 2,828 Views
The NPD Group's executive director and video game industry analyst Mat Piscatella has revealed some data on the US video game market for the first quarter of 2022, which ran from January to March.
Spending in the US on video game hardware, content, and accessories decreased eight percent year-over-year to $13.9 billion. Hardware spending dropped 15 percent, content spending was down seven percent, and accessory spending decreased 16 percent.
Despite the decline compared to last year, the US video game market is trending above pre-pandemic levels and the drop year-over-year is likely due to a return of more normal spending, according to Piscatella.
The Nintendo Switch was the best-selling video game console in Q1 2022 in the US, while the Xbox Series X|S led hardware in terms of consumer spending.
Piscatella said the Xbox Series X|S "had a pretty incredible Q1 overall." This is especially true when you compare it to how Xbox was doing before the launch of new generation of consoles.
Elden Ring was the best-selling game of the quarter in terms of dollar sales.
Spending on subscriptions grew in the mid-single digit percentage compared to last year and was the leading growth segment in the industry.
According to the new Q1 2022 Games Market Dynamics report from The NPD Group, U.S. spending on video game hardware, content and accessories reached $13.9B in the quarter, a decline of 8% when compared to Q1 2021. Content spending was -7% vs YA, hardware -15% and Acc -16%. pic.twitter.com/T3egW7J4Wx
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) May 4, 2022
Absolutely, especially considering where it was prior to the launch of the gen. Xbox had a pretty incredible Q1 overall.
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) May 4, 2022
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Based on comments from both Microsoft and Nintendo it sounds like there is going to be another slowdown if hardware sales in Q2 due to covid lockdowns in China reducing production output, which is unfortunate.
Still, seems like a great open to the year for Nintendo and Xbox
There's going to be a slowdown in damn near everything on planet Earth due to China's draconian COVID policies. If places like Australia and New Zealand want to do that ridiculous stuff, I don't really care. But when China or the US do those kinds of things, it screws up all of the developed world.
Don’t want to get too political here on the main page but there is speculation that the Chinese vaccine failed (vastly inferior to its western counterparts) and the return to 0 covid policies are the government scrambling to try and stop things getting out of control
Would be very grim if true because then that would mean this is likely going to keep happening until China develops a better vaccine or starts importing western vaccines
It´s not true at all. Chile utilizes Chinese vaccines and it´s okay. China´s cautions and doesn´t wanna USA covid disaster it´s a bad thing now? All first-generation vaccines don´t have 100 efficacy, you know this, right? None have sterilization on the virus too, so if you have and vaccinated you transmitted for other people. Some people can´t vaccinated.
By what standard? China has a shitload of COVID infections. It is possible that the situation would be worse without the draconian lockdowns, maybe even likely. But, we don't know that for sure. What we do know for sure is that these lockdowns are devastating the global economy. That has very real consequences on the health of the human race.
It looks like that's probably correct, but we don't have enough data to say for sure. Regardless, though, I don't think there's any reasonable case to be made that the extremely negative impact that the Chinese lockdowns are having on the global economy is an acceptable price to pay for reducing COVID transmission (especially now, when the incidents of severe symptoms are way down) . Like I said, it's a different thing when Australia or New Zealand do it. Their policies have much less effect on the rest of the world than China's do.
That said, I have been quite disheartened by the lack of pushback from the people in these countries where significant lockdown-like restrictions have been put in place. It appears to me that COVID policies have represented the most significant reduction in human freedom in modern times. And in many places, the pushback on that has been pretty weak. It's sad, and frightening.
Considering Australia is what feeds a massive 60% of all of China's iron ore alone, which gets refined and processed in China and then turned into products... I wouldn't be so sure... We are a resource rich country that underpins the worlds production.
Our policies allowed industry to continue... But it also kept people safe until we got an acceptable vaccination rate to reduce the impact of COVID.
Our approach worked. But it won't work in China now because the Virus is already in circulation, the best they can do is slow it down.
Hold on a sec... so you're telling me that locking everything down and telling people all over the globe they can do nothing but stay at home has some sort of correlation with the increased videogame sales numbers we saw over the last few years?
And here I just thought that everyone in the world was becoming hardcore gamers.
;)
-NOT HARDCORE ENOUGH NINJA APPROVED-
