NPD: February market up year-on-year

The North American video games market has once again defied the global credit crunch by showing significant year-on-year gains for the month of February – and Nintendo is the company that continues to impress.

Figures from NPD showed that February was up 10 per cent compared to the same month the year before, with revenues hitting $1.47bn. Hardware revenues in isolation were up 11 per cent at $532.7m, with software climbing nine per cent $733.5m.

Nintendo’s Wii was the best selling console, shifting 753,000 units. DS was second in line (588,000), followed by Xbox 360 (391,000), PS3 (276,000), PSP (199,000) and PS2 (131,000).

Wii Fit was the top software performer with unit sales of 644,000, though if sales of Capcom’s Street Fighter IV on both Xbox 360 and PS3 then the title’s total sales hit 849,000. Sony’s Killzone 2 sold 323,000 units – probably lower than most were expecting.

The US video games industry continues to post strong year-over-year comps despite the tough economy,” NPD’s Anita Frazier stated. Unit sales increased even more than dollar sales did, reflecting a slightly lower average retail price for all categories as compared to last year.

The Xbox 360 realized its biggest non-holiday sales month, save for September 2007, when the Halo 3 release brought in a large group of new owners. Compared to last month, the PS3 realized the greatest month-over-month unit sales increase of all platforms.”