NPD April Shows Nintendo Surge, PS3 Disappointment

Author: by Staff

The April 2007 NPD game hardware and software report for North America is out, and it has revealed overall game sales down 1% to $399 million, but overall hardware and software sales up 20% to $839 million, thanks to stellar performances from Nintendo DS and Wii. Specifically, the NPD statistics supplied to Gamasutra by the firm reveal that the Nintendo DS dominated the month's hardware sales, with 471,000 units sold, closely followed by Nintendo's Wii console, which sold 360,000 units in April, despite continuing console shortages. The Xbox 360 sold 174,000 units for the month, slightly behind the PlayStation 2, which managed 194,000 for April, and the PlayStation Portable, which sold 183,000 in the month. However, the PlayStation 3 again slumped, with just 82,000 units sold in April, again behind the Game Boy Advance, which sold 84,000 copies. As for the month's games, Nintendo's Pokemon Diamond and Pearl for DS dominated, with the former selling 1.045 million units, and the latter 712,000 - a combined first-month total of over 1.75 million for the evergreen franchise. Next in the top ten by sales was a pair of Wii titles - Super Paper Mario, which sold 352,000, closely followed by Wii Play at 249,000 - with Activision's also hard-to-find Guitar Hero 2 for Xbox 360 doing well again with 197,000 units for the month. Finishing up the top ten were the PlayStation 2 version of Guitar Hero, with 142,000 units, and the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 SKUs of Activision's Spider-Man 3, at 117,000 and 105,000 units respectively. Finally, God Of War II sold 101,000, and MLB 07 - The Show managed 79,000 to round out the top ten. Overall, the notable trends for the month were a surge in portable hardware sales - up 43% over the previous year to $99 million - and portable software sales - up 61% to $141.5 million. Console software actually took a dive in dollar terms compared to April 2006, down 19% to $248.3 million. But, thanks to the Wii's success and the higher prices for the new systems, console hardware was up 56% to $239.4 million. Lifetime North American sales numbers for each of the major consoles were also revealed in the official NPD release this month, and the PlayStation 2 is now up to 38.2 million units, closely followed by the Game Boy Advance with 35.7 million units. The Nintendo DS has surged up to 10.9 million units in the region, with the PlayStation Portable now reaching 7.4 million units. Perhaps the most interesting race is within the next-gen consoles, though, with the Xbox 360, launched a year earlier, at 5.4 million units, but Nintendo's Wii now at 2.5 million units and the PlayStation 3 currently at 1.3 million units sold.