Mortal Kombat dominates sales, Portal 2 close behind

The latest NPD Group analysis on physical US video game sales has been released, for April 2011. Keeping an eye on US sales performance is a good way to gauge to overall health of the video game industry.

The following analysis as well as the data in the table pertains only to new physical retail sales of games, hardware and accessories, and NOT digital format sales or other methods of industry monetization such as advertising. In 2010, new physical sales of hardware, software & accessories comprised 77% of the consumer spend on the industry, and if looking at content sales specifically, new physical retail sales represented 63% of the consumer spend on games content.

Below are highlights from the report, including analysis from NPD Group analyst, Anita Frazier.

Overall

“New physical retail sales of hardware, software and accessories showed notable growth in April versus last year.  A 17% increase in unit sales translated into over 20% dollar growth due to higher average retail prices,” said Frazier.

“Sales occurring in April resulted in 2% year-to-date dollar growth for new physical sales, reversing the negative trend up until March.  All three categories experienced double-digit dollar growth compared to April 2010.”

“Easter purchasing occurred in April this year as opposed to March last year.  The Easter timing shift could explain about US$60 million of the growth, but even accounting for that shift, sales of new physical product realized a notable increase versus last year.”

Hardware

“Hardware sales realized the least growth at the category level.  Unit sales were up 3%, with the greater dollar sales growth being driven by an increase in average retail price.”

“The PS3, PSP and Xbox 360 platforms saw an increase in unit sales versus April 2010. The Xbox 360 platform was the best-selling of the month in terms of unit sales, followed by the Nintendo DS.”

“April marks the third consecutive month of year-over-year increase in dollar sales for the hardware category.”

Software

“April 2011 represents the first month that new physical retail sales of content showed growth in both units and dollars since November of last year.”

“The Xbox 360 platform generated the greatest unit sales of new physical content at over 3.5 million units for the month, followed by the Nintendo DS platform.  The Nintendo DS, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 platforms all generated greater unit sales of content versus April 2010.”

“The best-selling game of the month is Mortal Kombat 2011, which sold just under 900K units in its first month at retail.”

“Portal 2 was the second best selling game in April. According to our PC digital download report, the original Portal was the fifth most downloaded game in 2010, and was available for free when Steam launched on Mac. Portal’s performance on the PC, coupled with the success of the Orange Box on consoles undoubtedly helped prime the fan base for Portal 2.”

“The content slate was stronger this year versus last April.  Five games sold more than 250K units in April 2011 as opposed to just two last April.”

“Games that would appear in the top ten ranking on a SKU basis for April include “NDS Pokemon Black Version,” and “PS3 SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy Seals.”  If sales of the SOCOM Move accessory bundle were combined with software sales, this game would have ranked in the top ten titles as well.”

Accessories

“On a year-to-date basis, video games accessories realized the greatest year-over-year percentage increase of all categories.  The best-selling accessory item in April was the Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points Game Card.”

“Sony’s SOCOM 4: Full Deployment Bundle, which included the Sharpshooter as well as the Move, was the top new accessory release.”

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