NPD: June market fails to sparkle

The US video games market suffered yet another year-on-year decline in June, with its $1.1bn worth of sales representing a six per cent year-on-year decline.

The falls come despite an impressive display from Xbox 360. The launch of the slimmed down Xbox 360 S saw hardware sales surge to 451.7k – Microsoft’s second largest non-holiday hardware month since the 2007 release of Halo 3. However, the struggling portable market meant that overall numbers were down on 2009.

In isolation, however, hardware sales were actually up on the month before and five per cent up year-on-year reaching $401.7m.

The DS was the best selling machine of the period, shifting 510.7k which was an increase of 127k compared to the month before. Wii sold 422.5k, PS3 304.8k and PSP 121k – double what it sold in May.

The year-to-date hardware sales see DS in the lead with 3,071,400 units shifted. That’s down 33 per cent annually. Wii is up 17 per cent at 2,455,700 while both Xbox 360 and PS3 are enjoying fantastic sales boosts. Microsoft’s console has sold 1.924,900 so far in 2010, up 88 per cent compared to this stage in 2009. PS3 is up 85 per cent at 1,591,000. PSP sales stand at 599,300 – down 26 per cent annually.

Xbox 360’s US lifetime sales are still 8m unit sales ahead of PS3 at 20,555,886.

Despite the impressive hardware performance, software sales suffered a 15 per cent year-on-year slump, reaching a total value of $531.3m. Red Dead Redemption continued to lead the software race with unit sales of 582.6k on Xbox 360 and 380.3k on PS3.

Other strong performers included Super Mario Galaxy 2 (548.4k), New Super Mario Bros Wii (200.9k) and Just Dance (178.8k).

Games that failed to trouble the June Top 20 include Transformers: War for Cybertron, Tiger Woods 11, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Singularity and Alpha Protocol.