Metue.com

Amidst continually bullish forecasts for the gaming industry, NPD Group released its monthly hardware U.S. sales data for June. Taking seasonal slowdown into account, the numbers were again incredibly strong, especially for Nintendo, which for the first time saw the Wii beat out even the portables as the top selling platform of the month.

For hardware, sales was up 77% over last year to $380.8m. Nintendo, attention to the user experience and efforts to reach out to new gamers again dominated both full–size and portable hardware categories. In Jul6, Nintendo sold 425k Wii units and 381.8k DS. . The numbers are particularly impressive considering the July include 4 weeks of data and the June numbers included 5. Readjusted for weeks, Nintendo sold about 106k Wii’s a week this month, last month they totaled about 76k.

Microsoft and Sony maintained their previous positions, finishing second and third in console sales. Both, however, also saw improvements over June numbers with price cuts definitely helping Sony gain ground. (June PS3 sales: 98.5k, July: 159k)

Cyclical summer sales slowing was barely noticeable in software. Software sales turned in a 11% gain to $419.9m revenue (down relative to last month per seasonal patterns but comfortable up relative to last year). Electronic Arts returned to top positions with the release of new sports games. Competitor Activision also did well demonstrating continued interested in alternative controller based games with its Guitar Hero game franchise taking three top ten positions. All in all, taking seven of the top ten game sales position, it was a solid month for the independent publishers.

In a recent interview, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot predicted big things for the industry going on record saying he "expect[s] the market to grow by 50 percent in the next four years." He said, "it’s a very exciting time for all the developers and publishers.” The continued strong numbers don’t hurt his argument.

The numbers for July:

Hardware

• Nintendo Wii: 425,000
• Nintendo DS: 405,000
• Playstation 2: 222,000
• PlayStation Portable: 214,000
• Xbox 360: 170,000
• PlayStation 3: 159,000

Games (title – platform – publisher – units)

• NCAA Football 08 – XBOX 360 – Electronic Arts – 397,000
• Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks The ’80s – PS2 – Activision – 339,000
• Wii Play (with Wii Remote) – Wii – Nintendo – 278,000
• NCAA Football 08 – PS2 – Electronic Arts – 236,000
• Wii Mario Party 8 – Wii – Nintendo – 177,000
• NCAA Football 08 – PS3 – Electronic Arts – 156,000
• Pokemon Diamond Version – Ninendo DS – Nintendo- 144,000
• Transformers: The Game – PS2 – Activision – 143,000
• Guitar Hero II (with guitar) – PS2 – Activision – 138,000
• Guitar Hero II (with guitar) – XBOX 360 – Activision – 108,000