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Gaming Surges Further Ahead: NPD March Data 04-18-2008
How hot is the domestic video game market? According to NPD’s monthly gaming round up, which was released Thursday, as hot as ever. It fact, it may be nearing molten.
Overall, for March, total sales, including hardware, software and accessories rose 57 percent versus a year ago hitting $1.7 billion. The number was also up month to month besting the $1.33 billion in total sales registered in February.
Software sales, in particular, were outstanding with a monthly return of $945.6 billion, a 63 percent annual gain and well ahead of both January and February results. Some comparative numbers shows just how staggering the number is. According to data from Home Media Retailing, combined movie rentals for the top ten movie titles in March generated approximately $270 million at the registers. Domestic film box offices grosses for the same period were $567.2m (via Box office Mojo). The $945.6m in video game software sales beat the two combined.
“You’d never know that the U.S. economy was under distress by looking at the video game industry sales figures,” NPD analyst Anita Frazier wrote in a statement. With year over year growth showing at 27 percent, she seems right on.
Breaking down the subsets: in hardware, yet again Nintendo dominated the field. In consoles, the Wii moved 721k units, a nose ahead of a second place overall from their portable DS (698k). 
Finishing third, but with less than half the unit sales of either the Wii or DS was Sony’s PSP. The portable climbed up over the field after a poor showing in February. Rounding things out, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was in the middle with a slight monthly improvement. Sony’s consoles, both the PS3 and PS3, finished in the bottom slots – both the only hardware products off in month to month sales totals.
In software, Nintendo took the top slot with a staggering opening result for Super Smash Brothers Brawl. The new title moved 2.7million units, nearly two million ahead of the number two seller. Activision’s Call of Duty 4, which led in January, December, and February, dropped to 9th. That fall won’t likely cause much concern though. According to an analysis of the NPD figures compiled by Activision’s Infinity Ward studio, the game has sold over 9 Million copies worldwide since its release in November.
Another bigger story with the software top ten list is the age of the titles that made the cut. Unlike past months, where older titles and established franchises dominated, March was about new releases. All of the top three titles were released during the month. Out of the total, in fact, only three titles, Wii Play with Remote (#4), Guitar Hero III for the Wii (#7) and Call of Duty 4 (#9) were repeats. Everything else was new. That near billion dollars sales tally was driven by new titles in a non-holiday shopping season. That is noteworthy.
As usual with the monthly NPD report, spin doctors from all three console makers were quick to interpret selections of the data and fire off related press releases and emails that characterized their products as the monthly winner.
For Microsoft, the spin amounted to product life cycle calculations. It’s not about finishing fourth in hardware sales, or second among consoles, they said. In their words, “Consumers continue to make the ultimate vote for the Xbox 360 as the console of choice.” It is a success evidenced by leading total spending over the consoles lifecycle ($9.4b for the Xbox 360). (Of course, with different release dates and product lifespans, it is hard to give a lot of weight to such analysis).
For Sony, a highlight of the month was solid growth for the PSP platform. Unfortunately, it’s also offset by slightly decreased month to month total unit sales on both the PS3 and PS2. Still, even being the caboose on the monthly hardware list isn’t a problem for spinners. As Sony’s reps put it, they showed an impressive 98% sales growth year over year. That’s the bigger story they’re selling: they’re better off than last year (even though the same can be said for the whole industry).
For Nintendo, as has been the case, it was another dominating month. Total hardware sales were more than 1.4million units and three of the top ten software titles were for the Wii (including number one). All those top finishes left little need for spin but there was some gloating. Nintendo claimed to be defining the industry and driving its momentum.
THE MARCH NUMBERS
March Hardware Sales (in units sold) (February Results)
• Wii: 721,000 (432,000)
• Nintendo DS: 698,000 (587,600)
• PlayStation Portable: 297,000 (243,100)
• Xbox 360: 262,000 (254,600)
• PlayStation 3: 257,000 (280,800)
• PlayStation 2: 216,000 (351,800)
March Software (Title.(Platform.Publisher) (Units)
1. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii, Nintendo) – 2,700,000
2. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2¹ (360, Ubisoft) – 752,300
3. Army of Two (360, Electronic Arts) 606,000
4. Wii Play w/ Remote¹ (Wii, Nintendo) 409,000
5. God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP, Sony) 340,500
6. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (PSP, Square Enix) 301,600
7. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Wii, Activision) 264,100
8. MLB 2K8 (360,Take-Two Interactive) 237,100
9. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare¹ (360, Activision) 237,000
10. Army of Two (PS3, Electronic Arts) 224,900
¹ These numbers include sale of special edition, limited edition or bundled version.
Overall Industry Totals (Total ( % Change)(Last month’s total))
Video Games: $1.7 billion (+57%) (+57%) ($1.33 billion)
Video Games Hardware: $551.3m (+46%) ($480.0 million)
Video Games Software: $945.6m (+63%) ($668.7m)
Video Game Accessories: $220m (+58%) ( $185.3m)
For comparative data, NPD’s data from each month for the past year can be found by clicking the names of the month as follows:
2008: •January •February
2007: •February •March •April •May •June •July •August •September •October •November •December
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anand Apr 20
Seth, just discovered you via your e-phone article on seeking alpha. That article, and the one above are quite high quality.
I had a question for you regarding the i-phone. How many watt hours is the battery on the current i-phone version?
FYI, the Apple laptops sport battery lives of:
68 Watt Hours MacBook Pro (17 inch model and upgraded 15 inch model)
60 Watt Hours MacBook Pro (cheaper 15 inch model)
55 Watt Hours MacBook
37 Watt Hours MacBook Air
I also liked the article on gaming. I had no idea people still bought so many PS2s. Nintendo’s strenght is stunning.
Do you have any visibility on when the next generation console might be coming to market? Is it 2009? If so, what NVDA GForce GPU will it sport? NVDA has done an amazing bringing GPUs to market.
Maybe think about an article on the GPUs for consols at some point in the future.
Seth Gilbert Apr 20
Anand,
Thanks very much for the comment and compliment. Glad you found and liked the site. There are hundreds of other articles. I hope you’ll check some of them out too.
Regarding your questions - I’ll do my best to answer and add a few links for detail where appropriate:
the iPhone battery: The standard battery is a 3.7V 1400 mAh Lithium Ion Polymer battery…. If memory serves on how to calculate Watt Hours, that is equal to 5180 mVah which in turn is 5.18 Watt Hours. As for how much life you get for the battery depending on the use, Apple issued a comparative chart back in June in a press release (it can be found here).
Regarding the consoles: there have been whispers and rumors but I really have nothing more than guesses The safe bet is a good ways off. Both the PS3 and Xbox 360 are still considered “next gen” right now. Both also have received tremendous investment in their designs. The chip structure and blu ray bundling with the PS3 are case in point. Given the PS2 is not even fazed out yet, and game developers are just starting to build momentum for PS3 games (the SDK prices were only lowered in November 2007 to encourage more development (story here)) So… from Sony I wouldn’t expect anything before 2010 other than evolutionary changes to the existing platforms - things like different drive sizes, new controllers or other home entertainment features like DVR technology (which incidentally was bundled with PS3s in Europe last August. See here for that). On the other hand, Sony’s product marketers have some times been downright illogical in some of their moves. I’ve been hard on that in a few past posts, including the one linked article in particular. Given the track record, as unlikely as a change is, I wouldn’t rule anything out absolutely. At Microsoft, given the spend and established user base, I wouldn’t expect anything dramatic to change for the Xbox line either. And as for Nintendo, they’re still fighting to get supply to match demand and dominating with both console and portable despite far less computing power. It’s hard to imagine what they would do next, or when, given the success they’re having.
Regarding the GPUs - I suspect there are some great article opportunities tied to them. In fact, I’ve done some light coverage of them in the past. One recent article (linked here) was an overview of some of the alternate uses game consoles are getting. It’s truly amazing: military use of the Wii controller to control robots as one example. And with regards to GPU’s — a distributed computing application for cancer and medical research from Stanford that harnessed the GPU architecture on the PS3 to function as a global computational network is another. As of the last report, by the researchers’ estimates, using PS3’s when the consoles were idle advanced their research 10 years. The wider press didn’t cover it much, but its incredible.
Down the road I will try and get something more on the GPU’s as time allows. I’m always open to posting guest author work though, so if you come across something on the space or are a writer yourself, I’m glad to take a look at articles and put something up for the site’s audience to read.