Xbox 360 Loses Top Game System Position to 3DS After 21 Months
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
The 3DS became the best-selling videogame system in the U.S. in May, outperforming the Xbox 360, which had been No. 1 for 21 straight months, NPD said late Monday. But the 360 remained the top-selling home videogame console in the U.S. for the 29th straight month, said NPD. The 3DS hardware sales performance was likely driven by the “strong software slate so far this year” for that system, NPD analyst Liam Callahan told Consumer Electronics Daily Tuesday.
About 114,00 Xbox 360s were sold last month (actually May 5-June 1), Microsoft said, citing NPD’s data. That was less than the 130,000 that Microsoft said were sold the prior month (CED May 20 p12). Total U.S. retail spending on all Xbox 360 products reached $149.8 million, the most for any console in the U.S., said Microsoft, again citing NPD’s data. Several of the top 10 console game titles were for the 360 last month, said Microsoft. They included Injustice: Gods Among Us from Warner Bros. Interactive, which was also the month’s No. 1 videogame. But most of the top-selling 360 games were also released on other platforms.
Nintendo of America didn’t say how many 3DS units, or any of its other hardware systems, were sold last month. Sony Computer Entertainment America, as usual, didn’t say how many of its systems were sold. NPD stopped providing videogame hardware sales data to reporters a while ago.
Software unit sales for the 3DS jumped 60 percent in May from May 2012 and there were three 3DS games in the top 10 this time, including Nintendo’s Donkey Kong Country Returns for the 3DS and Wii at No. 3, said Callahan. Microsoft’s announcement of the coming Xbox One may have played a role in the 360 sales slowdown.
Total U.S. videogame industry sales across all products tumbled to $386.3 million in the physical sales channel, from $517 million in May last year, said NPD. Videogame hardware sales tumbled 31 percent to $96 million, while videogame accessory sales dipped 6 percent to $115.3 million. Total physical videogame software sales dropped 31 percent to $175.1 million. Total physical game software sales, which adds in PC games, tumbled 44 percent to $187.6 million, said NPD.
The total software decline was “driven partly by sharp year-over-year declines within PC games due to” the difficult comparison the sector faced versus May 2012, which benefited from the release of the popular Blizzard Entertainment game Diablo 3, said Callahan. There were also fewer new software releases last month, he said.
Taking into account NPD’s preliminary estimate for other physical format sales in May, including used and rented games, at $91 million, and its estimate for digital game sales at $339 million, Callahan said total U.S. consumer spending across all game products in May was $787 million.
The better showing of accessories compared to other game categories was helped by the strong performance of point and subscription cards, said Callahan. It was the best May ever for those products in units and revenue, he said. Sales of accessories for Activision’s Skylanders games are also “trending positively,” and were up nearly 50 percent in units and 60 percent in revenue compared to May 2012, he said. May 3DS accessory sales had the lowest decline across the game platforms, down only 2 percent, he said.