Ouya Console Sales ‘Relatively Light’ In First Month, NPD Says
Ouya was mum Friday on how many consoles it sold in June and to date after NPD analyst Liam Callahan said U.S. retail sales of the $99 videogame system last month were “relatively light for a new console.” The weak performance “may be due to the lack of a major marquee title driving consumers to seek out the console, low awareness due to Ouya being a new brand, or low inventory volume due to manufacturing constraints,” he said.
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The Ouya console went on sale last month at select retail stores and at the company’s website. NPD’s data didn’t factor in units that were sold direct from Ouya, said Callahan. NPD didn’t say how many Ouya units were sold at U.S. retail stores. Ouya declined to say how many units it sold, but said Friday that it “sold every unit available [during] launch week” and was “still chasing demand."
The 3DS, meanwhile, remained the top-selling videogame system in the U.S. for the second straight month, while the Xbox 360 repeated as the best-selling home videogame console for the 30th straight month, said Callahan. Although NPD stopped providing hardware sales data to reporters, Nintendo of America (NOA) said “nearly 225,000” 3DS systems were sold in June, while Microsoft said 140,000 Xbox 360 consoles were sold in the same period. Both manufacturers were referring to NPD’s sales data, released late Thursday, for June 2-July 6 rather than the 30 days of June. NOA didn’t say how many Wii U or Wii consoles were sold and Sony Computer Entertainment America again didn’t say how many of any of its game systems were sold last month.
The 3DS’s performance was stronger than the more than 155,000 systems that NOA said were sold in June 2012 (CED July 16/12 p4). But the Xbox 360’s performance was weaker than the 257,000 that Microsoft said were sold in June 2012. The console, however, sold better in June than it did in May (actually May 5-June 1), when about 114,000 were sold (CED June 19 p6).
Total U.S. retail spending on all Xbox 360 products grew to $197 million in June from $149.8 million in May, said Microsoft. That was “the most for any console” in the U.S., it said, citing NPD’s data. Several videogames in the top 10 were Xbox 360 titles, including the 360 version of Minecraft at No. 3. Xbox One pre-orders are also “trending ahead” of Xbox 360 pre-orders during the same time period before its launch and have “already sold out at most major” U.S. retailers, said Microsoft.
Total U.S. videogame hardware sales tumbled 30 percent to $142 million June 2-July 6 in the physical retail channel compared to the comparable period a year ago, said NPD. Total U.S. videogame industry sales across all products fell 15 percent to $593.3 million, while videogame accessory sales dropped 9 percent to $155.2 million. Total physical videogame software sales fell 10 percent to $296.1 million. Total physical game software sales, adding in PC games, fell 14 percent to $313.8 million, said NPD. Taking into account NPD’s preliminary estimate for other physical format sales in June, including used games and rentals at $118 million, and its estimate for digital game sales at $544 million, Callahan projected that the total amount of money that U.S. consumers spent in the sector was $1.2 billion. Increased point and subscription card sales “offset” accessory sales declines for the period, but the accessory category declined for the month because of a decline in the top three accessory categories: gamepads, headsets and headphones, and all other accessories, he said.
The period’s best-selling videogame was Sony’s The Last of Us for the PS3, followed by Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the 3DS, said NPD. New Leaf sold more than 505,000 combined physical and digital units in the period, said NOA. More than 20 percent of those sales were through the Nintendo eShop, the second-highest ratio, behind only Fire Emblem Awakening, it said. Nintendo’s internal data indicated that sales of the game “continue to be strong” in July, it said. Nintendo’s Donkey Kong Country Returns for the 3DS sold more than 108,000 combined units in its second month and its Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon for the 3DS added almost 115,000 combined units in its fourth month, boosting its lifetime total to more than 750,000 combined units, said NOA. Through the first six months of 2013, Nintendo sold almost 3.6 million combined physical and digital units of first-party 3DS software, an increase of more than 85 percent over the same time frame last year, said NOA.