NPD Study: Lower Prices, Higher Unit Sales Across Industry

The decline in dollar volume and increase in unit volume was largely attributed to console price cuts that took place in the second half of 2002. The change was even more pronounced when looking at just console and portable hardware. That segment saw a 12.6 percent decline in dollar sales and a 16 percent increase in units sold in Q1 2003 over the same time last year. Game software for consoles and portables saw a 6.5 percent increase in dollar volume and a 1.5 percent increase in unit volume in first quarter 2003 over first quarter 2002. Perhaps not surprisingly, PC video game sales dogged the rest of the industry. That segment saw a decline of five percent in dollar volume and a 3.5 percent decline in unit volume as compared to last year -- lower prices did not result in increased sales. Steve Koenig, a senior software analyst at NPD, believes that will change this year. "The PC game market may have experienced declines in the past year, but if you look at the number of highly anticipated PC titles expected to release this year such as Doom III and Half-Life 2, the outlook for growth in this category is promising," Koenig said.