Video-game industry sales are continuing to slump in the US, with NPD figures for May released this evening showing a 23 per cent drop year-on-year, with falls led by hardware sales.
It’s hard to imagine any improvement till the holiday season, barring early price cuts for the consoles. Major game releases also seem to be “back-end loaded”, compared to last year, when there were big hits earlier in the year, such as Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA).
John Riccitiello, Electronic Arts chief executive, told me at the E3 show last week that a weak March and April had been no surprise to him – he had predicted mid-single-digit growth for the industry at the beginning of the year, when analysts were forecasting 10 per cent growth or more.
“We’re not particularly nervous about the last couple of months and what was anyone expecting when you compare it to GTA and Wii Fit [the year before]?” he said.
As we predicted last week, THQ’s UFC 2009 Undisputed was the top game, selling just over 1m units, with Wii Fit still performing well in second with 353,000 units and EA’s new Sports Active (pictured), which also takes advantage of the balance board accessory, close behind on 346,000.
Hardware sales were down 30 per cent on a year ago at $302m, with sales of the Wii continuing to decline markedly, from 340,000 in April to 290,000 in May.
“The video games industry continues to struggle with difficult comparisons to last year, and this is the first month that industry sales have dipped below $1bn since August 2007,” said Anita Frazier, analyst with the NPD research firm.
Not much to shout about for the console makers then. The best Microsoft can come up with in its press release is: “Xbox 360 system sales hit 175,000 units in May, showing the most year-over-year resilience of any console.”
Nintendo touts sales of the DS handheld, which were strong, with the new DSi version now boosting the product, at 633,000 units. Sony, whose PS3 sales barely outstripped its PS2 ones (131,000 to 117,000) has yet to comment.
