NPD September Data Debuts, Shows Issues

Analysts at securities firm Piper Jaffray have reported on the new NPD U.S. game sales data for the month of September, noting the report unfortunately contains some attribution problems. NPD have confirmed that the report does contain errors but has not specified them, although online sources indicate it included attributing certain games to the wrong publishers, and individual game titles themselves are not affected. A revised version of the report is to be imminently released. The current version of the report suggests that overall video game sales were up 44 percent from the same period last year, with Xbox sales up 87 percent, Game Boy Advance up 75 percent, GameCube up 39 percent and PlayStation 2 up 29 percent. The report also indicates that the Game Boy Advance dominated hardware sales for the month with 527,133 units sold, followed by Xbox at 265,067, PlayStation 2 at 253,295 and GameCube at 114,789. The success of the Game Boy Advance is greatly influenced by the release of Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen, which topped the all consoles sales charts. Lionhead/Big Blue Box's Fable has also been a particularly strong seller, dominating the Xbox sales charts, and another interesting point appears to be EA's Madden NFL sales lead being significantly eroded by the budget-priced ESPN NFL title from Take-Two/Visual Concepts, though the EA Sports title still comes out on top.