Just a few short weeks ago, the May reporting period from NPD Group painted a rather unhappy portrait of the videogame market in North America and stocks like Activision (ATVI) and Electronic Arts (ERTS). Total sales were down by -20% for the same period in 2009, with major players in the video game software publishing business Activision, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and others failing to make significant impressions on sales charts.
NPD reported sales for the June period this past Thursday, and while the software numbers were as soft as they were in May, video game hardware performed particularly well.
Overall, the numbers are less than thrilling. Revenue was down -6% over 2009, down to $1.10 billion from $1.17 billion. The real source of the decline is software sales. Video game stock Take-Two (TTWO) had a runaway hit Red Dead Redemption, whose May sales gave TTWO stock shareholders a much appreciated shot in the arm. Red Dead sold well in June with just under 1 million units sold across both the Microsoft (MSFT) Xbox 360 and the Sony (SNE) Playstation 3.? The rest of the software charts, however, were less kind. Nintendo (NTDOY) dominated with their games Super Mario Galaxy 2, New Super Mario Bros., and Wii Fit Plus taking up three spots on the top ten, but with Galaxy 2 their best seller at just 548,400 units sold, it’s hardly a banner month for the Big N.
Disney (DIS) made the charts with the Nintendo DS SKU of their Toy Story 3 tie-in, as did Warner Bros. Interactive‘s (TWX) Lego Harry Potter on the Nintendo Wii. THQ‘s (THQI) UFC 2010: Undisputed also returned to the charts but failed to sell more 300,000 units total across multiple platforms. Noticeably absent from the charts a! re major releases from ATVI like Transformers: War for Cybertron, a game based on the successful toy and film franchise, and their racing game Blur released in late May. NPD Group should announce games that made the 11 through 20 spots in the top 20 list this week, though no game in those spots will have sold more than 136,000 units.
The hardware market, meanwhile, was very healthy. While year to date hardware revenue is down 16% overall, June 2010 saw a +4.9% increase over June 2009, and an impressive 35% increase in unit sales. Leading the home console pack was MSFT who released a redesigned model of their Xbox 360 on June 19. Of the 451,700 Xbox 360s sold in June, however, just 40% were redesigned units according to Webush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter. Pacther estimates that some 35% of the units sold were of the Xbox 360 Arcade SKU which sells at just $150, bringing the system closer to the coveted impulse buy market.? SNE sold just 304,800 Playstation 3s in June, losing out to Microsoft but continuing their 11 month streak of year-on-year improved sales for the system. SNE has been suffering from supply constraints since this past January. NTDOY, as always, put in an incredibly strong showing with 422,500 Wiis sold in June and 510,700 Nintendo DS continuing their dominance of the portable games space.
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