NPD: Game Sales Down 15% In Feb

By Lisa Johnston -- TWICE, 3/22/2010

PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. — Video game dollar sales declined 15 percent in February when compared with the prior-year period, according to The NPD Group.

Sales of video games were $1.26 billion in February of this year, compared with $1.48 billion in 2009. When broken out by category, sales of hardware dropped 20 percent, from $534.2 million in 2009, to $426.4 million; software dropped 15 percent, from $736.7 million, to $624.4 million; and accessories dropped a mere 1 percent, from $206.1 million, to $204.7 million.

Nintendo DS was the best-selling hardware unit, with 613,200 units sold. Xbox 360 was next (422,000), followed by Wii (422,000), PlayStation3 (360,100), PlayStation Portable (133,400) and Play- Station2 (101,900).

Anita Frazier, NPD analyst, said in a statement regarding the figures: “The industry realized another month of decreased sales as compared to last year. In fact, for most categories, unit sales declines were greater than dollar sales. Higher average retail prices on all categories except console hardware boosted dollar sales performance somewhat.”

Fraizer added, “Honestly, I had expected the industry to perform somewhat better this month. Nonetheless, strong new releases, and Easter giftbuying bodes well for industry performance in March.”

The best-selling software title was BioShock2 for the Xbox 360.