The OFFICIAL Apr 2007 NPD Thread

[koffieboon]

From gamedaily.biz: NPD: DS Sells More than 5 Times PS3 in April; Total Industry Sales Up 20% Nintendo absolutely dominated the competition in yet another month, as the DS led by Pokemon Diamond and Pearl drove sales. The PS3 had its worst month with only 82,000 sold. NPD analyst Anita Frazier still has hope for the PS3 and she also tells us that it's "inevitable" that 2007 will be another record-breaking year for the U.S. game industry. Complete data and comments inside... The NPD Group has released its video game sales data for the April reporting period, revealing a 20 percent increase in total industry sales. The industry generated $838.6 million and year-to-date it's up 46 percent to $4.2 billion. Software sales were actually down 1 percent in April, totaling $389.8 million. Console software in particular was down 19 percent to $248.3 million. Offsetting that somewhat was a strong performance by portable software, which jumped 61 percent to $141.5 million. Meanwhile, game accessories were up 37 percent to $110.4 million. It was hardware, however, driven by the Nintendo DS that helped push the industry in April. Hardware was up 56 percent to $338.4 million. Console hardware increased 56 percent to $239.4 million, while portable hardware grew 43 percent to $99 million. Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter predicted PS3 sales in the U.S. for April would be around 100K. Unfortunately for Sony, they were even worse. PS3 sold a woeful 82,000 units for the month, while the Nintendo DS once again stole the show with 471K. PS3 sales were so low that Nintendo's ancient GBA sold more with 84K. The best selling console was Nintendo's Wii with 360K sold, while the Xbox 360 sold an unimpressive 174K. Sony's PS2 beat out the 360 (again) with 194K. The PSP sold 183K units and the GameCube (essentially on life support) sold just 13K. On a life-to-date basis, the hardware install bases in the U.S. now look like this: # PS2 – 38.2 million # GBA – 35.7 million # GameCube – 11.7 million # Nintendo DS – 10.9 million # PSP – 7.4 million # Xbox 360 – 5.4 million # Wii – 2.5 million # PS3 – 1.3 million Not only did Nintendo dominate hardware in April, but Mario and Co. also took the top four slots on the top 10 chart. People bought Pokemon on DS like hotcakes, as Diamond and Pearl combined for over 1.7 million sold. Super Paper Mario also did quite well on Wii with 352K sold. The complete top 10 chart follows below. 1. Pokemon Diamond—NDS—Nintendo—1.045 M 2. Pokemon Pearl—NDS—Nintendo—712K 3. Super Paper Mario—Wii—Nintendo—352K 4. Wii Play w/remote—Wii—Nintendo—249K 5. Guitar Hero 2 w/guitar—360—Activision—197K 6. Guitar Hero 2 w/guitar—PS2—Activision—142K 7. Spider-Man 3—360—Activision—117K 8. Spider-Man 3—PS2—Activision—105K 9. God of War II—PS2—Sony—101K 10. MLB '07: The Show—PS2—Sony—79K