PS4 Was April’s Top Seller for Fourth Straight Month, Says NPD
The PS4 was the top-selling videogame system in the U.S. in April for the fourth straight month, according to NPD’s latest sales data. It was also the fourth straight month in which Sony’s console outsold the Xbox One, April’s second best-selling game hardware system, said NPD.
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Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) declined to 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. SCEA repeated only that more than 7 million PS4s had been sold globally since the console launched in November, and said it “remains the cumulative leader” in sales among the new consoles.
About 115,000 Xbox One consoles were sold in the U.S. last month (actually April 6-May 3), and its sales have “outpaced” those of the Xbox 360 by 76 percent in the first six months each system was on the market, said Microsoft, citing NPD data. But April Xbox One sales were significantly weaker than March, when about 311,000 were sold (CED April 21 p8), and February, when about 258,000 were sold (CED March 17 p7). The Xbox One continued to lead in software sales, with the most cumulative units sold for any eighth-generation home console platform life-to-date, said Microsoft.
About 71,000 Xbox 360 consoles were sold last month, Microsoft said, again citing NPD data. That was more than any other seventh-generation console sold in April, said Microsoft. More games were sold for the Xbox platform (the 360 and Xbox One), with 2.6 million games sold last month, than for any other game console platform, it said. About 447,000 game units for the Xbox One were sold in April, while 2.2 million game units for the Xbox 360 were sold, making up a combined 53 percent of the total software market in the U.S., it said, citing NPD’s data.
Xbox One sales will likely get a lift starting June 9, when Microsoft makes a version of its console available without the Kinect motion sensor for $399 -- $100 less than the current SKU that comes with the accessory and the same price as the PS4 (CED May 14 p7).
Nintendo of America didn’t immediately say how many of its Wii U, Wii, 3DS and 2DS systems were sold in the U.S. last month. But sales of the Wii U, its latest home console, have been struggling.
Total U.S. videogame hardware revenue last month soared 76 percent from April 2013 to $192.8 million, said NPD. The growth was “driven by” home console sales, which increased 120 percent from a year ago, said NPD analyst Liam Callahan. Cumulative PS4 and Xbox One hardware sales were more than double the combined sales of PS3 and 360 hardware through their first six months of sales, he said.
Total April U.S. videogame industry sales across all products in the new physical retail channel grew 17 percent from a year earlier to $580.3 million, said NPD. The increase came from hardware and accessory growth and was despite a decline in new physical software sales, said Callahan. Accessory sales grew 21 percent to $159.7 million, the largest increase seen so far in 2014 for accessories, he said. Most of the increase was fueled by interactive gaming toys, videogame point and subscription cards, and gamepads, he said. Sales of interactive gaming toys for titles including Activision’s Skylanders series were the strongest, with sales up more than 80 percent from the prior year, possibly helped by gift-giving for the Easter holiday, he said. Headsets and headphones experienced their second straight month of revenue growth, he said.
Total April U.S. videogame software sales in the new physical retail channel fell 10 percent to $227.9 million, said NPD. Factoring in PC games, U.S. game software sales decreased 10 percent to $240.8 million. Combined PS4 and Xbox One software sales last month were more than 40 percent stronger than sales of games for the PS3 and Xbox 360 through their first six months, said Callahan. Wii U software sales grew more than 80 percent from a year earlier, he said. But a weakness in new releases was a “major reason” for the 10 percent decline in total software sales, he said. Sales of new releases were down 20 percent in units and 25 percent in revenue from a year earlier, he said. Titanfall, published by Electronic Arts, for the Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PCs, was again the month’s best-selling title.
The dollars cited by NPD were only about 50 percent of the total that U.S. consumers spent on the game market last month, said Callahan. When factoring in NPD’s preliminary estimate for other physical channel sales including used games and rentals at $100 million, and its estimate for digital game sales at $507 million, Callahan projected that U.S. consumers spent $1.1 billion on the videogame sector last month.