Overall sales of games went up 4 percent in September, according to market research firm NPD - but not without more than a few caveats. The video game industry raked in $630.2 million in software sales at retail stores last month, up from $612.1 million a year earlier. But the bad news is that console sales tumbled 9 percent to $349 million from $382.9 million in 2010. The decline in hardware sales offset the gains in software, creating a 6 percent overall drop in total sales to $1.16 billion from $1.23 billion in September 2010. The data provided by NPD did not include digital sales, used game sales, online game sales, or revenues gained from social games.
The modest gain in software sales were mostly attributed to Madden NFL 12 being pushed to the tail end of August. The good news according to analysts is that the rest of 2011 will be good for the industry as big end-of-year titles including Battlefield 3, Batman: Arkham City, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Star Wars and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 hit retail.
Even with strong sales of AAA titles, 2011 could go out with a whimper instead of a bang; the video game industry could still end up being down compared to 2010 due to price cuts in hardware, and strong declines earlier this year in the usually strong summer months. Analyst Michael Pachter estimates the total for the year will show a 4 percent decline compared with 2010.
The top-selling video games for September were:
- Madden NFL 12, Electronic Arts
- Gears of War 3, Microsoft
- Dead Island, Deep Silver
- FIFA Soccer 12, Electronic Arts
- NHL 12, Electronic Arts
- Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Square Enix
- Resistance 3, Sony
- Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars, LucasArts
- Call of Duty: Black Ops, Activision Blizzard
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, THQ
Xbox 360 was the top-selling console in September with 438,000 units sold during the month, according to figures released by Microsoft. Sony did not release figures but did say that NPD's September report showed double-digit growth for both PS3 software (52 percent) and hardware (20 percent). Nintendo said that it sold 260,000 3DS hand-held units, 240,000 Wii's and over 145,000 DS systems in September.
