PS4 Was Best-Selling U.S. Game System Last Month, NPD Says

SCEA, as usual, didn’t say how many units of the PS4 or any of its other hardware systems were sold last month. Microsoft, for the first time since the Xbox One launch in November, didn’t say how many units of its system were sold last month. Nintendo of America didn’t say how many of its systems were sold last month either, but it’s widely known that its next-generation console, the Wii U, has been struggling. NPD stopped providing game hardware sales data to reporters a while ago.

Callahan declined to speculate on why the PS4 was able to outsell the Xbox One by such a wide margin last month. But despite outselling the Xbox One, Sony’s console seemed much more supply-constrained in the U.S. Friday, according to our checks of several retailers’ websites.

Amazon had both systems available Friday. But the PS4 was much harder to find at Best Buy, GameStop, Target and Walmart, according to their websites. The Xbox One was available for purchase at all of their websites. But the main $399 SKU of the PS4 wasn’t available at any of their sites, though GameStop.com and Walmart.com had much more expensive PS4 bundles. Most of Walmart’s Long Island, N.Y., Los Angeles and South Florida stores were out of stock on the PS4, according to its site. Xbox One availability at those same stores was more mixed. The PS4 was listed as out of stock at all the Long Island, South Florida and Los Angeles Target stores we checked at that retailer’s website. But the Xbox One was available at those same stores.

PS4 demand “seems to have been consistently stronger” than demand for the Xbox One since their November launches, independent game industry analyst Billy Pidgeon said Friday. The PS4 grabbed a larger U.S. market share than the Xbox One “due to lower hardware pricing” -- the Xbox One costs $100 more -- and also because Sony was “able to seize marketing opportunity from Microsoft’s messaging missteps leading up to launch,” he said. But Microsoft is “likely to close the share gap in March with the release of the highly anticipated” Electronic Arts videogame Titanfall, an exclusive for the Xbox One and Xbox 360, he said.

Although the PS4 was the No. 1 videogame system in the U.S. in November (CED Dec 16 p3), the Xbox One was on top in December (CED Jan 21 p3). But the PS4’s combined two-month sales total made it the “best selling console during the two-month launch window,” Callahan said last month.

The PS4 “remains the cumulative leader” in sales based on NPD’s data, John Koller, SCEA vice president-platforms marketing, said at the PlayStation Blog late Thursday. Sony sold through more than 4.2 million PS4s globally during the entire holiday season, he said, without giving a sales update. Sony has “sold every PS4 available” in the U.S. since it launched Nov. 15, he said. The company will “continue doing our best to provide additional inventory in all of the 53 countries” where the console is available, despite the impending Japan launch Feb. 22, he said. The company has “supply refreshing throughout the channel regularly,” he said. Memberships to Sony’s subscription PlayStation Plus service, meanwhile, have grown more than 90 percent in number since the PS4 launch, exceeding his expectations, he said. More than 90 percent of PS4s in the U.S. have also already been connected online, he said.

Microsoft Friday declined to say how many Xbox Ones were sold last month. A spokeswoman only referred to a statement posted online by Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president-Xbox marketing, strategy and business, that the Xbox One “sold at a rate of 2.29 times faster” than the Xbox 360 in the U.S. in the same time frame for the first three months on the market. More games for the Xbox One and Xbox 360 combined, meanwhile, were sold across all console platforms in January than any other platform, with 2.3 million copies moved, for a 47 percent software market share, he said. U.S. consumers have bought an average of 2.7 games per Xbox One console since launch, he said.

"Continued success of the new consoles drove” a 17 percent increase in total game hardware sales last month in the U.S., said NPD’s Callahan. Hardware sales were $241 million for the month.

Total U.S. videogame industry sales across all products in the physical retail channel fell 21 percent from January 2013 to $664 million, said NPD. But the January period last year included five weeks, while last month’s included only four, said Callahan. Sales were down only 1 percent year-over-year when the data was “normalized” by multiplying January 2013 sales by 0.8 (four-fifths), he said.

January accessory sales in the physical channel dropped 23 percent from a year ago to $199 million, said NPD. Interactive gaming toys and videogame point and subscription cards “helped to offset the declines” in other types of accessories, said Callahan.

U.S. videogame software sales tumbled 40 percent in the same channel to $224 million, said NPD. Factoring in PC games, U.S. game software sales fell 41 percent to $232 million. The dollars cited by NPD were only about 50 percent of the total money that U.S. consumers spent on games last month, said Callahan. When factoring in NPD’s preliminary estimate for other physical channel sales including used games and rentals at $113 million, and its estimate for digital game sales at $335 million, Callahan projected that U.S. consumers spent $1.1 billion on games last month. Digital game sales take into account full game and add-on content downloads including microtransactions, subscriptions, mobile apps and social network games, he said. NPD’s final assessment of Q1 U.S. consumer spending in these areas outside of new physical retail sales will be reported in April, he said.

A “major factor” in January’s software sales decline was the slide in performance of November and December game releases during January compared with how November and December 2012 game releases performed in January 2013, said Callahan. Sales of November and December game releases collectively decreased 36 percent year-over-year this time, he said. There were also only about half the number of SKUs released in January compared with January 2013, leading to a 52 percent decline in sales of new releases, he said.

The month’s best-selling videogame was Activision’s multiplatform Call of Duty: Ghosts for the third straight month, said NPD. Take-Two Interactive’s multiplatform NBA 2K14 moved up three to No. 2. The multiplatform Battlefield 4 from Electronic Arts slipped one to No. 3. No PS4 or Xbox One exclusive game was in the top 10.

Sales of Wii U software grew more than 16 percent last month from sales in January 2013, Nintendo of America (NOA) said Friday, citing NPD’s data. Pokemon X and Pokemon Y for the 3DS sold more than 125,000 copies combined in their fourth month on the market, boosting cumulative sales of the titles to more than 3.25 million combined units in the U.S. alone, said NOA. They were two of the four 3DS titles to sell more than 1 million copies in 2013, along with Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, increasing the platform’s total number of million unit sellers to eight, it said. After its third month on the market, cumulative sales of Super Mario 3D World for the Wii U grew to more than 655,000 copies, while cumulative sales of The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds for the 3DS grew to almost 715,000 units after its third month available, said NOA.