NPD: U.S. Retail Game Sales Down 10 Percent In June

The latest report from tracking firm The NPD Group shows that total retail video game industry revenues in the United States in June were down 10 percent overall. Revenues totalled $1.03 billion, versus the $1.15 billion reported one year ago. The biggest decline was in console and portable software sales: the $469.5 million in revenue reported for the month is 12 percent lower than the $531.3 million reported last year, when Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption and Nintendo's Super Mario Galaxy were still strong performers. The majority of the software decline is due to the poor performance of Wii software at retail, according to Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, who tweeted that it contributed to 75 percent of the decline in revenue, or around $46 million. In terms of retail software sales, Take Two Interactive held the number one and two slots in the top ten with Team Bondi's L.A. Noire and Gearbox's Duke Nukem Forever. The company's NBA 2K11 also made the charts, at number seven. Sony's open-world adventure inFamous 2 debuted at a respectable third place, and Disney's LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean managed to hold on to a top five slot for the second month in a row, at number four. Other June debuts were The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D at number 5 and Disney's Cars 2 at number nine. Zelda sold around 280,000 units in the month, according to an official Nintendo announcement provided to Gamasutra. The top ten best-selling retail games in the United States for the period beginning May 29 and ending July 2 are as follows: 1. L.A. Noire (Take Two, 360, PS3) 2. Duke Nukem Forever (Take Two, 360, PS3, PC) 3. Infamous 2 (Sony, PS3) 4. Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game (Disney, Wii, 360, NDS, PS3, 3DS, PSP, PC) 5. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (Nintendo, 3DS) 6. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision, 360, PS3, Wii, NDS, PC) 7. NBA 2K11 (Take Two, 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP, PC) 8. Mortal Kombat 2011 (Warner Bros., PS3, 360) 9. Cars 2 (Disney, NDS, Wii, 360, PS3, PC) 10. Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft, Wii, Ubisoft) Note that traditionally, commentary from NPD analyst Anita Frazier is provided with these numbers. No such commentary was provided today, but we have followed up with her and will update this story if any new or insightful information should arise. [UPDATE: In addition to information provided by Microsoft and by Sony on their own platforms' or games' performance in the U.S. in June 2011, Nintendo provided Gamasutra with the following information: "Nintendo sold more than 800,000 combined hardware units in June. This includes 386,000 units of the Nintendo DS family of systems, 273,000 Wii systems and 143,000 Nintendo 3DS systems." "Each product line saw double-digit growth over the previous month, and the lifetime U.S. installed base for the Wii system crossed 36 million units... Five of the top 10 and 13 of the top 25 best-selling individual software titles play on Nintendo platforms."]