The NPD Group releases monthly statistics for video game consoles (among other things). The numbers for August are in for the United States, and the PlayStation 3 showed growth in console sales.
As can be seen in the graph above (and further explained in the raw numbers below), the PlayStation 3 was the only console to see any positive change in the number of consoles shipped from July to August. Xbox 360 numbers are still the strongest of the group, however that console also saw the largest decrease in sales, with an almost 20% drop in hardware sales compared to July. The PS3 only saw a 5.3% increase in sales, but once again this was the only console that saw positive growth from July to August. Below are the numbers for consoles sold in August:
- Xbox 360 – 356,700
- DS – 342,700
- Wii – 244,300
- PS3 – 226,000
- PSP – 79,400
The PSP dipped by around 5K units compared to July. Overall, the industry is doing a bit worse than the same time last year: compared to August 2009, software sales were down 14.4% from $471.2M to $403.5M.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days did not sell well enough to make the top-20 list on either platform. Madden NFL 11, on the other hand, saw combined sales of 1.8 million copies sold between the PS3 and Xbox 360 version, up 12.5% (200K copies) from August 2009’s 1.6 million units for Madden NFL 10. The game took the top spot for the 20 best-selling games for August 2010:
- Madden NFL 11 (Xbox 360) – 920.8K
- Madden NFL 11 (PS3) – 893.6K
- Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii) – 124.6K
- Mafia II (Xbox 360) – 121.6K
- New Super Mario Bros. (DS) 110.4K
- New Super Mario Bros. (Wii)
- Mafia II (PS3)
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) (101K)
- NCAA Football 11 (Xbox 360) (87K)
- Wii Fit Plus (Wii)
- Just Dance (Wii)
- Red Dead Redemption (360)
- Pokemon SoulSilver (DS)
- Madden NFL 11 (Wii)
- NCAA Football 11 (PS3)
- Wipeout: The Game (Wii)
- Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
- Dragon Quest IX (DS)
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3)
- Mario Kart DS (DS)
So while the PS3 may have placed fourth this month, it still showed growth and with the Move launching this month those numbers may very well be higher when the September numbers have been tallied.
