PS4 Still Top Console Despite Tight Supply, Says NPD March Report
The PS4 was the top-selling videogame system in the U.S. in March for the third straight month, according to NPD’s latest sales data. Sony’s console outsold the Xbox One despite continued supply weakness on the PS4 and also despite last month’s release of the Electronic Arts-published Titanfall, a console exclusive for Microsoft’s system that was the country’s best-selling videogame in March. Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) didn’t say Friday how many PS4s were sold in the U.S. last month and NPD stopped providing hardware sales data to reporters a while ago.
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The Xbox One “continues selling at a strong pace,” with about 311,000 units sold in the U.S. last month, said Microsoft, citing NPD data. That’s better than the 258,000 sold in the U.S. a month earlier (CED March 17 p7), likely helped by the March 11 release of Titanfall. The game is being sold alone and also as part of a limited edition bundle with the console at a suggested retail price of $499.99, the same selling price for the console without the game. The PS4 costs $100 less. An average of 2.9 games are being sold per each Xbox One sold, said Microsoft.
More than 5 million Xbox Ones have shipped to retailers globally since the console launched in November, Microsoft also said Thursday, despite declining to give a shipment update earlier in the day (CED April 18 p7). Xbox One sales have surpassed those of the Xbox 360 at the same point in time by more than 60 percent, it said. Users are spending an average of five hours a day on the Xbox One and have collectively spent more than 1 billion hours of time on games and apps on the console, it said.
But the PS4 is significantly outselling the Xbox One globally. More than 7 million PS4s were sold globally as of April 6, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) said Thursday. The 2 million unit advantage of the PS4 is amplified when factoring in that Microsoft’s number referred to shipments, while Sony’s number referred to units sold to consumers. The PS4 was also harder to find at retail stores than the Xbox One for much of March. The PS4, however, was easier to find at major U.S. retailers’ online websites Friday than it was a month ago despite SCE saying Thursday it was “still facing difficulties keeping up with the strong demand."
It was surprising that the PS4 again outsold the Xbox One last month, Needham analyst Sean McGowan said Friday. “I thought the gap” in sales between the consoles would “disappear” in March, he told us, attributing PS4’s continued sales advantage to its lower pricing. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter was also surprised that the PS4 beat the Xbox One in March, “especially with all of the $450 Xbox One bundles” that were being sold by some retailers and even Microsoft, he said. Pachter thought the Xbox One would have a 3:2 sales advantage over the PS4 last month, he said. Microsoft “must be bumming” about the data, said McGowan. But Microsoft is “incredibly proud of our performance,” it said Friday, when asked if it was disappointed that the PS4 topped the Xbox One again last month.
About 111,000 Xbox 360 consoles were sold in the U.S. last month, Microsoft said, again citing NPD data. More games were sold last month for the Xbox consoles combined than for any other platform, with 4.1 million copies, including 1.4 million for the Xbox One and 2.7 million for the 360, said Microsoft.
Nintendo of America didn’t immediately comment on NPD’s March sales data (actually March 2-April 5), or provide any new monthly sales data for its systems publicly.
Total U.S. videogame hardware revenue last month grew 78 percent from March 2013 to $395 million, said NPD. The growth came “completely” from home console sales, which were up more than 100 percent year-over-year, thanks mostly to continued strong demand for the PS4 and Xbox One, said NPD analyst Liam Callahan. Cumulative sales of the two consoles through the first five months of availability totaled “more than double that of their predecessors,” the PS3 and Xbox 360, in the same time frame, he said.
Total March U.S. videogame industry sales across all products in the new physical retail channel inched up 3 percent from a year earlier to $1 billion, said NPD. The growth was due to strong growth in hardware sales and “modest” growth in the accessory category, where sales grew 4 percent to $224 million, said Callahan. The accessory growth was mainly due to increased demand for gamepads and headsets/headphones, he said. Gamepad sales increased behind the launches of the new consoles, with the top two products in March being controllers for the PS4 and Xbox One, he said. The increased headset and headphone sales came largely from Turtle Beach products, he said. Turtle Beach released new headphones for the PS4 and Xbox One, one specifically supporting the release of Titanfall, he said. The new accessories helped Turtle Beach U.S. sales grow more than 50 percent in March from last year, and increase its share an unspecified amount within the headsets/headphones category, he said.
Despite overall growth in videogame hardware, accessories and the entire videogame category in March, U.S. videogame software sales in the same retail channel tumbled 27 percent to $406 million, said NPD. Factoring in PC games, U.S. game software sales slid 28 percent to $432 million. The declines were due to “poor comparisons” to new releases in March 2013, said Callahan. Last month’s new releases sold 42 percent less than March 2013 releases, he said. Year-over-year sales on every game platform declined from March 2013, with the exception of the PS Vita, whose sales grew last month behind the release of Square Enix’s PSV Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster, he said. Titanfall, also released for PCs, was last month’s best-selling game and had a “solid” hardware-to-software attach rate on the Xbox One, he said. After one month of sales, it is the second-highest selling title for the Xbox One to date, behind Activision’s multiplatform Call of Duty: Ghosts. The latter title slipped to No. 4 last month after being the No. 1 videogame for fourth straight months. Also topping it this time was Sony’s PS4 game inFAMOUS Second Son at No. 2 and Ubisoft’s multiplatform South Park: The Stick of Truth.
The dollars cited by NPD were only about 50 percent of the total 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 $135 million, and its estimate for digital game sales at $532 million, Callahan projected that U.S. consumers spent $1.7 billion on the videogame sector last month.