Ben-DutkaWell, considering the last few months, an overall 10% dip isn't that bad at all.
The March NPD sales have been released and total US gaming industry sales fell 10% to $992.5 million. Bioshock Infinite topped the software sales charts, followed by Tomb Raider , Gears of War: Judgment , God of War: Ascension and Call of Duty: Black Ops II . Yeah, BOII is still showin' up.
NPD Group analyst Liam Callahan added that the $992.5 million in sales comprises "only about half of the true market spend for the month." That's an important caveat:
"When you consider our preliminary estimate for other physical format sales in March such as used and rentals at $190 million, and our estimate for digital format sales including full game and add-on content downloads including microtransactions, subscriptions, mobile apps, and the consumer spend on social network games at $670 million, we would estimate the total consumer spend in March to be just under $1.9 billion."
Unsurprisingly, hardware took a steep dive, falling 32% overall. But thanks to the aforementioned titles, total software sales were up 2%, which marks the first month of positive growth since November 2011. Callahan said the performance of March 2013 titles sold over 40% more units than new launches in March 2012, so that's a good thing. Furthermore, March turned out to be a great month for publisher Take-Two Interactive, as the new Bioshock sits at #1 and continued high sales of NBA 2K13 have helped the publisher achieve the highest sales for an individual company since the NPD Group began tracking sales stats back in 1995.
It was also noted that both Bioshock Infinite and the Tomb Raider reboot tallied the highest first-month sales in each franchise's history.
Just got Tomb Raider today, can't wait to jump in Friday.
I wish we got some actual numbers, especially in the digital sales realm. It's hard for me to spot and discuss trends when the industry is basically hiding this information from us.
obvious this month would be up from march last year, that only had ME3 releasing as a big name title if i remember right.
this year we had quite a few, and dare i say bioshock infinite was far more highly anticipated than ME3!
not to mention we had 2 of the industries biggest franchises receiving sequels too in the shape of GOWA, and GOWJ.
come to think of it though, each month hopefully should be on the up from here.
april this year has allot more titles releasing than last year.
may probably will be the exception to this.
june last year nothing released, this year we have remember me, the last of us, deadpool, just to name a few.
july is pretty empty, but so was last year.
august last year was pretty quiet, but this year we have quite a few big name games releasing, splinter cell blacklist just to name one.
september is pretty full, as always.
october, well, were hoping for the possible release of next gen consoles over october / november.
hopefully from here sales should be on the up.