March 2023 Circana (NPD) covers the five week period from February 26 to April and will be released on April 19.

Be sure to get your predictions in before April 19. Since NPD leaks don't happen nearly as often as it used to and hardware revenue is something we do get, be sure to include revenue in your predictions. 

March 2023 Hardware:

• Units: 1) PS5 2) NS 3) XSX|S
• Dollars: 1) PS5 2) XSX|S 3) NS

Feel free to also predict what you think the top software games will be for the month. 

Example prediction:

[Total Hardware Revenue]

1. [#1 selling console] XXX,000
2. [#2 selling console] XXX,000
3. [#3 selling console] XXX,000

VGChartz breakdown of the March 2023 Circana (NPD) data (Link to article here):

PS5 Best-Selling Console in the US in March, Resident Evil 4 Remake Debuts in 1st

The PlayStation 5 was the best-selling console in the US in March 2023 in terms of units sold and dollar sales, according to figures from Circana (formerly The NPD Group). NPD includes the dates for the five week period of February 26 to April 1.

PlayStation 5 sales is once again the main reason for the growth in hardware sales. The PlayStation 5 is now tracking ahead of the PlayStation 4 in the US when you align launches.

The Nintendo Switch was the second best-selling console in February in terms of units sold, while the Xbox Series X|S came in third place. In terms of dollar sales, the Xbox Series X|S was in second place, while the Nintendo was in third place.

Overall spending on video games in March was down five percent year-on-year from $4.88 billion to $4.63 billion. Spending on video game content decreased seven percent from $4.12 billion to $3.83 billion, while video game hardware sales jumped 10 percent from $516 million to $566.

Overall spending on video games in 2023 year-to-date is down one percent from $13.79 billion to $13.58 billion. Spending on video game content decreased four percent from $11.97 billion to $11.51 billion, while video game hardware sales is up 21 percent from $1.20 billion to $1.46 billion.

"Consumer spending on video game content, hardware and accessories totaled $4.6B, a 5% decline when compared to a year ago," said Circana Executive Director and Video Game Industry Analyst Mat Piscatella. "ear-to-date consumer spending fell 1% when compared to the same period in 2022, to $13.6B.

"PlayStation 5 lifted hardware spending in March. However this growth was offset by a decline in content spending, where increases in non-mobile subscription as well as digital add-on console content were offset by lower spend across premium games, PC add-on content and mobile."

Piscatella added, "Video game hardware spending increased 10% when compared to March 2022, reaching $566 million. This is the second highest video game hardware spend for a March month in U.S. history, trailing only the $680 million reached in March 2021.

"Growth in PlayStation 5 hardware spending once again drove the March hardware gains. PlayStation 5 was the best-selling hardware platform in units and dollars for both March as well as 2023 year-to-date.

PlayStation 5 hardware unit sales have now surpassed those of PlayStation 4 on a time-aligned basis (29 months in market)."

The remake of Resident Evil 4 debuted at the top of the software charts (ranked by dollar sales) and is the third best-selling game of 2023. Hogwarts Legacy was the second best-selling game of March and is the best-selling game of 2023.

There were two other new releases in the top 20. MLB: The Show 23 debuted in third place, while WWE 2K23 debuted in seventh place.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II dropped two spots to fourth place, The Last of Us Part I is up one spot to fifth place, and FIFA 23 is down one spot to sixth place.

Elden Ring is down one spot to eighth place and Madden NFL 23 fell from fourth to ninth place. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is up three spots to 10th place and Minecraft is up two spots to 11th place.

Here are the top 20 best-selling games in terms of dollars for March 2023:

Here are the top 20 best-selling games in 2023 year-to-date:

I'll give it a shot:

Revenue: 545k

[PS5] 650k
[NS] 360k
[XBS] 300k

[PS5] 523k
[NS] 382k
[XBS] 286k

So last month I was way too conservative. This month I will boost up a little bit. I still expect a decline from FEB

[PS5] 600k
[NS] 260k
[XBS] 170k

In this prediction Switch is down YoY but not much. We should see a turnaround in May's data. Xbox collapses this month mainly due to an apparent lack of X stock. I'm expecting both Sony and Microsoft to be launching slim models in September so look.out for that.

How I could know ?

How will I know if he really loves me

Hardware revenue: 475m

PS5 600k
Switch 300k
XBS 260k

Units: PS5 #1, Switch #2, Xbox #3
Revenue: PS5 #1, Xbox #2, Switch #3

Xbox being ahead of Switch in revenue is very surprising considering Xbox stock in the USA has been absolutley abysmal in March, was expecting a terrible result for Xbox so I'm wondering if Switch sales are lower than expected.

PS5 has now sold more than the PS4 in the USA launch aligned. The PS4 had apparently sold 13.38m by the end of March 2016 so PS5 sales should be above this.

Thanks for the quick breakdown of the NPD report. I'm working on the article right now. It should be up soon. 

The PS5 has sold over 620,000 units in the US in March as it set an individual PlayStation record for March. Previous record was 620,000 by the PSP.

Switch and Xbox Series X|S are most likely down year-on-year as both had really a good March 2022. NS sold 500K and Xbox Series X|S sold 480K.