Port Washington, N.Y. —Nintendo sold more than 1 million DS portable game systems to U.S. consumers during the month of April, according to the NPD Group, as a new Nintendo DSi propelled sales well beyond that of Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP).
DSi sales totalled 827,000 units in April, while DS Lite sales were 215,000 units for a total of 1.04 million DS unit sales, said Nintendo referencing NPD figures.
Sony’s PSP sold 116,000 units during April, said NPD.
Also Nintendo’s Wii console remained the leading video game home system in the U.S. selling more than 340,000 units in April, while the Microsoft’s Xbox 360 sold 175,000 units and the Sony PlayStation 2 sold 172,000 units followed by the PlayStation 3 at 127,000 units, said NPD.
Although overall industry video game hardware sales were down from last April by eight percent, NPD noted that last April 2008 was an unusually strong month “that realized nearly 50 percent growth over April 2007. This year’s performance still represents the second-best performance for the industry in the month of April,
besting April 2007, which is the previous second-place holder, by 26 percent,” said analyst Anita Frazier,
She added, “Given how strong the growth was in the industry last year, there are still some months ahead where year-over-year comparisons may be difficult, but May should be an easier comparison than the last two months have been.”
Overall year to date sales for video game hardware was down by one percent and the total, category, including games is down 4 percent year to date through April, said NPD.
