- Main article: NPD Seventh generation
April 2009 NPD sales figures coverage: April 5 - May 2, 2009
Anita Frazier, industry analyst at NPD states that DSi basically stole the show in April. "I think the introduction of the DSi just captured a lot of folks' attention for the month," she said. "While the Wii was down, it still sold a lot of units 30 months after its release. By comparison, in April '03 when the PS2 was 30 months in the market, it sold 264K units and had an install base of 17.5 million - and I think we'd all call the PS2 a major success. The Wii install base is now at 20 million. Also keep in mind that last year the introduction of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart were big catalysts for Wii hardware acquisition and we just don't have titles of that magnitude this year. So while it's tempting to start to want to find issues, I don't think we can read that much into what this means when we're comparing against some monster months last year."
"While April sales might appear soft on the surface, it's important to remember that April is being compared against a month (NPD April 2008) that realized nearly 50 percent growth over NPD April 2007. This year's performance still represents the second-best performance for the industry in the month of April, besting April 2007, which is the previous second-place holder, by 26 percent."
"One area we personally enjoy following is the music genre. Some feel that it's becoming an over-saturated market. Frazier doesn't agree, however. "The Music/Dance game genre realized a unit sales increase of 55% this month as compared to last April so the genre as a whole is doing great. There are more games in this space now than there used to be so it's more fragmented, GH Metallica and GH Aerosmith were the third and fourth best games for the month when you combine sales of all SKUs and platforms."[1]
Notable releases[]
- The Godfather 2 (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC)
- Ninja Blade (Xbox 360)
- Excitebots (Wii)
Hardware sales[]
- Wii - 340,000
- Xbox 360 - 175,000
- PS3 - 127,000
- NDS - 1,040,000
- DSi - 827,000[2]
- PSP - 116,000
- PS2 - 172,000
YTD:
- PS2 516,200
- DS 2,701, 800
- PSP 655,300
- 360 1,205,000
- PS3 824,200
- Wii 2,373,200
Top 20 software sales[]
- Wii Fit W/ Balance Board (Wii) - 471k
- Pokemon Platinum Version (NDS) - 433k
- Mario Kart W/ Wheel (Wii) - 210k
- Wii Play W/ Remote (Wii) - 170k
- The Godfather II (X360) - 155k
- Resident Evil 5* (X360) - 122k
- New Super Mario Bros (NDS) - 119k
- Mario Kart DS (NDS) - 112k
- Guitar Hero Aerosmith* (X360) - 110k
- The Godfather II (PS3) - 91k
- Guitar Hero: Metallica (X360)
- Mario & Sonic (NDS)
- Rhythm Heaven (NDS)
- MLB '09: The Show (PS3)
- Professor Layton: Curious Village (NDS)
- Resident Evil 5 (PS3)
- Call of Duty: World at War (X360)
- Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (NDS) - 74k[3]
- Guitar Hero: Metallica (PS2)
- Major League Baseball 2k9 (X360)
- Misc
- NPD Top 20 games per platform[4]
- Excitebots - 13k (not in top 100)[5]
- The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (Atari, PC, 360, PS3) – 100k[6]
- Killzone 2 - 58k [7]
- Halo 3 - 57k-74k[8]
- Halo Wars - 57k-74k[9]
Video game revenues[]
- Total sales: $1.03 billion
- Hardware sales: $391.8m
- Software sales: $510.74m
- Accessories: $129.45m
External links[]
- NPD: Video Game Industry Down 17% in April 09 Despite DS Surge
- NPD Responses: Microsoft Highlights Third-Party Strength [10]
- NPD Top 20
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