Yearly game sales down in March

The overall sales and revenues from the video game industry appear to be down from last financial year. As expected, Mass Effect 3 tops the charts.

*NPD Group’s U.S. Games Industry Sales (New Physical Sales Channel) – March 2012 – 5-week month; March Reporting Period 2/26/12 through 3/31/12**

Dollar Sales	Mar ’11	Mar ’12	CHG
Total Video Game Sales (New Physical Channel)	$1.47B	$1.10B	-25%
Video Games Hardware	$494.5MM	$323.5MM	-35%
Video Games Software (Console+Portable – New Physical Sales only)	$735.4MM	$553.1MM	-25%
Video Games Accessories	$241.4MM	$222.5MM	-8%

Total Software Sales – (Console+Portable+PC – New Physical Sales Only)	$790.9MM	$585.1MM	-26%

March 2012 Top 10 Games (New Physical Retail only; across all platforms incl. PC)	Rank	Publisher
Mass Effect 3 (360, PS3, PC)**	1	Electronic Arts
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (360, PS3)**	2	Capcom USA
MLB 12: The Show (PS3, PSV)	3	Sony (Corp)
NBA 2K12 (360, PS3, Wii, PSP, PC, PS2)	4	Take 2 Interactive
SSX 2012 (360, PS3)	5	Electronic Arts
Street Fighter X Tekken (PS3, 360)**	6	Capcom USA
Mario Party 9 (Wii)	7	Nintendo
Call of Duty: Modern Warfar 3 (360, PS3, Wii, PC)**	8	Activision Blizzard
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja (360, PS3)	9	Namco Bandai Games
Major League Baseball 2K12 (360, PS3, Wii, NDS, PSP, PC, PS2)	10	Take 2 Interactive

**(includes CE, GOTY editions, bundles, etc. but not those bundled with hardware)

Copyright 2012. The NPD Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Proprietary and Confidential.

*NPD’s monthly point-of-sale data reports on U.S. Games Industry sales occurring from new physical purchases at retail which is the largest channel for games sales, but does not represent 100% of industry sales; it does not account for consumer purchases made via digital distribution, used game sales, subscriptions, mobiles, rentals, or social network games. NPD’s Games Market Dynamics: U.S. is issued quarterly and is NPD’s official estimate of the consumer spend on the industry and It does include estimates of the size of those other monetization methods.