NPD Sales for January Dip Drastically Below Estimates, Modern Warfare 3 and Xbox 360 Top Charts
While January was a pretty lackluster month in terms of new game releases for US gamers, sales for the month were incredibly low, far lower than was initially projected. A measly $379.6 million was generated over the entire month from new games sold at retail across all platforms – a 38% drop.
NPD analyst Anita Frasier pointed out that while January 2011 saw many more high profile game releases including Dead Space 2 and LittleBigPlanet 2 than this past month, sales from games that were released during the holiday season were also considerably lower.
As shoppers were not drawn to stores due to new launch activity, this potentially impacted additional software purchases made on impulse.
Looking specifically at software, Modern Warfare 3 unsurprisingly topped the list with Just Dance 3 and Skyrim close behind. When compared to last year, there was a 38 percent decline with $355.9 million in games sales.
As expected, the Xbox 360 continues to rule the US, serving as the top selling console for the sixth straight month in a row. Even still, hardware sales dipped considerably as well, bringing in only $199.5 million of revenue, also a 38% decline over last year.
[Source]
7 Responses to “NPD Sales for January Dip Drastically Below Estimates, Modern Warfare 3 and Xbox 360 Top Charts”
I’m hoping Sony can change that, disgusting to think how much the 360 will sell this fall when the new CoD comes out alongside Halo 4. Hopefully Sony has some aces up their sleeves for this fall we have yet to see or hear anything about an exclusive shooter(FPS or 3PP) for the PS3 this fall which would be beneficial to combat the almighty Halo(JK) i’m positive E3 will bring some great reveals and announcements and my fingers are crossed that those rumors of a new Syphon Filter are true
someone I knew in college posted on facebook the other day that they had officially switched from PS3 to Xbox…all I could think to myself was, Why now? I mean everyone has their own opinions about systems, but if you have had a PS3 for a few years now you have seen all the amazing exclusives and that the PS3 has really become an amazing system and the 360, if anything, has lost some steam. My only conclusion, especially from knowing this guy, is that he really doesn’t care that much for gaming and he is probably only playing the “fad” games like COD, etc. In which case you might as well switch because you don’t deserve a PS3.
He probably switched just to get early access to CoD map packs.
While I completely agree with you, the history of ‘fads’ can show us that while something is a fad, it sells like crazy. And as long as COD has been going now (over 4 years), its tough to call it a fad. I have to believe something will take its place soon though. But yes, I completely agree giese.
Why SONY didn’t put the PS3 to ‘$199′ in the US before Xmas i will never know :-/
+ PS3 Exclusives won’t make the PS3 sell more than the Xbox 360 in the US to. The only way SONY will get more sales is by dropping the price of the PS3 to $199 in the US ASAP!;) The Xbox 360 is selling more because its cheaper not because of its Exclusives(yeah what Exclusives) LoL
+ The US is soooooooooooooo brain-washed by MS now i think its will be near on impossible for SONY to beat them this Gen in the ‘US’(hopefully i am wrong because i ******* hate MS! ! !) LoL;)
(+ i said ‘in the US’ because the PS3 should beat the Xbox 360 this year in ‘Worldwide’ sales)
Another reason is Sony’s piss poor marketing. For every PlayStation commercial there’s 5 for Xbox. Also M$ are misleading people by thinking multiplat games are Xbox exclusives.
While it pains me to see the PS3 is still not meeting or exceeding its inferior foe in sales, I would rather have that continue than keep getting this push towards other ‘gaming’ like facebook and mobile devices. The world of free and 99 cent games does not bode well for consoles. While there will always be the hardcore gamers to cater to, there is already a visible (and IMO, negative) impact that the mobile market is having on developers. Not that I enjoy paying $60 per game, but the many console games are worth the money and are GREAT games, unlike some of the mind-numbing facebook or mobile ones that are popular.