NPD Tallies US Video Game Revenue for June 2011 - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 14 July 2011 / 8,146 Views
NPD figures for June 2011, covering the five weeks to July 2, 2011 are now slowly arriving. It was another bad month for the industry, even with X360 up again from its 2010 pace. Industry revenue fell to $995m across (non-PC) video games, hardware and accessories combined, down 10% from June 2011. Figures for the month were split at the following levels:
Hardware sales have now mostly leaked out for the month from various sources. Red data in the table below is estimates based on hardware revenue overall and other totals.
Figures are based on the following: Microsoft's press-release for X360, Nintendo's press-release for DS, Wii, and 3DS. PS3 figures are based on the Microsoft's claim of 48% share of current consoles, as (1/0.48)*(507) = 1,056,000 consoles sold. You then take 1,056,000 - 507,000 X360s - 273,000 Wiis to get 276,000 or 277,000 PS3s (I went 277,000 as the other numbers are likely rounded). With all of that money accounted for, and PS2 still selling small amounts of hardware, it looks like about 65,000 PSPs sold as well.
The data makes it look like the Wii price cut in May accompanied a modest spike in May that quickly flattened out to about a +25% bump over April - mid-May weekly sales. PS3 sales increased about 10,000 per week from June, on giftcard deals and inFamous 2, but it was X360 that grew the most from May, jumping over 30,000 per week.
Michael Pachter did tell me in email however that much of the X360 year over year rise came from a) free X360s given away with Windows 7, and b) X360s sold directly to distributors (some of these units apparently ended up in Brazil) - and Microsoft convinced NPD to count both. Pachter didn't have figures on how many units those promotions added, but estimates that X360 would have dropped slightly year over year (-5% to -10%) without those inclusions.
Nintendo's DS also had a nice spike on the DS Lite price cut, jumping to 77,000 per week on the availability of a $100 price point. DS now looks like it will top 50m in the USA by the end of September - a first for any video game system in the market.
Over the past 12 months, Microsoft's X360 has outsold Sony's PS2 in the comparable time frame from launch by nearly 2.7m units, as PS2 was already quickly slowing by this point in its cycle while X360 is still (slowly) peaking. Wii continues to outsell PS2 over the comparable time frame as well by about 1m units, while PS3 is tracking 1m behind over the last 12 months.
Going forward, Wii and X360 should remain ahead of PS2 over consecutive 12-month periods at about the same rates through at least October as in the past few months. November and December will probably see their paces ahead of PS2 narrow a bit, but its a bit early to tell just yet.
Software sales were pretty terrible for the month, with Duke Nukem Forever selling less than 400,000 units, even with the PC version included. Announced software rankings for June 2011 are:
01. L.A. Noire (360, PS3) Take 2 Interactive - 419,000
02. Duke Nukem Forever (360, PS3, PC) Take 2 Interactive - 376,300
03. Infamous 2 (PS3) Sony 369,200
04. Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game (Wii, 360, NDS, PS3, 3DS, PSP, PC) Disney Interactive Studios (325k?)
05. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (3DS) Nintendo - 283,000
06. Call of Duty: Black Ops (360, PS3, Wii, NDS, PC) Activision Blizzard
07. NBA 2K11 (360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP, PC) Take 2 Interactive
08. Mortal Kombat 2011 (PS3, 360) Warner Bros. Interactive
09. Cars 2 (NDS, Wii, 360, PS3, PC) Disney Interactive Studios
10. Just Dance 2 (Wii) Ubisoft
Overall, even with the somewhat debatable X360 growth and DS Lite spike, it was a pretty bad month industry wide.
Contact VGChartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com
