NPD May Preview
NPD will report on videogame sales in the USA for the four weeks ending May 31, 2008 on June 12th at about 6:30 pm EST. The period covers all but the first few days of Grand Theft Auto IV & Mario Kart Wii sales, as well as the launch of Wii Fit. For the four weeks ending May 3, 2008, NPD reported USA sales were driven by Wii and DS on the hardware side, while PS3 and Xbox 360 remained under 200,000 units for the month, despite the sales of Grand Theft Auto IV at the end of the period. Most of the dialogue for May will rightly focus on whether or not Grand Theft Auto IV pushed Xbox 360 and/or PS3 over 200,000 in a four week month, and the type of numbers Wii and Wii Fit put up for the month.
In April, NPD had USA hardware sales at the following levels:
Wii 714,000
Xbox 360 188,000
PS3 187,100
DS 414,800
PSP 192,700
PS2 124,400
For May Vgchartz expects NPD to report:
- Xbox 360 outsold PS3 slightly for the month. Both sold about 200,000 units for the month.
- Wii sales remain over 700,000 for the month.
- Grand Theft Auto IV sold another 1+ million units on Xbox 360, and another 500,000+ units on PS3. Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit also sold over 500,000 units for the month.
- Nintendo, Take Two, EA & Activision were the top publishers for the month. Each publisher had titles in the top ten for the month.
Vgchartz data which covers the Americas, rather than just the USA, shows the following hardware data for the four week period:
Platform 10-May 17-May 24-May 31-May Total
Wii 130,059 104,559 324,028 158,384
717,030
PS3 56,580 50,968 46,636 43,581
197,765
Xbox 360 49,771 47,773 55,508 60,272
213,324
PSP 51,590 51,020 51,997 60,046
214,653
DS 132,300 119,992 121,612 130,636
504,540
PS2 32,506 29,329 27,255 28,570
117,660
Once again, DS and Wii took turns as the top selling platforms for the four week period. PS2 is also beginning to really slow down now, as three of the four weeks were under 30,000 units. PS3 sales at the start of the period were higher than Xbox 360 sales, but that switched in the second half of the month, despite a lack of significant new Xbox 360 titles at the end of the period. DS and PSP sales remained nearly constant week in and week out because they saw no significant releases for the period.
Hardware sales for the month were largely driven by Grand Theft Auto 4 (360/PS3), Wii Fit (Wii), and Mario Kart Wii. Older titles from previous months continue to sell well though. Wii Play (Wii) is the oldest of the titles in the top ten, but Rockband (360), Call of Duty 4 (360), Guitar Hero III (Wii), Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon 2(DS), Super Smash Brothers Brawl (Wii) are in the top for the month as well.
Rk. Game Platform Publisher Sales
1 Grand Theft Auto IV Xbox 360 Take Two 1,311,938
2 Mario Kart Wii Wii Nintendo 991,181
3 Wii Fit Wii Nintendo 869,665
4 Grand Theft Auto IV PS3 Take Two 617,873
5 Wii Play Wii Nintendo 381,885
6 Super Smash Brothers Brawl Wii Nintendo 276,394
7 Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon 2 DS Nintendo 269,929
8 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Xbox 360 Activision 171,821
9 Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Wii Activision 143,062
10 Rockband Xbox 360 EA 136,169
Just as the case was last month, Nintendo and Take Two sold millions of units of software, just from the top ten games, and everyone else was fighting for scraps. Next month should see some return to normalcy as Grand Theft Auto IV and Mario Kart Wii drop lower in the charts. It will be interesting to see where Metal Gear Solid 4 places next month, as it will be contending with a new Guitar Hero on Wii, Rockband on Wii, and Grand Theft Auto IV on Xbox 360, all of which may sell over 300,000 copies each
http://www.vgchartz.com/news/news.php?id=1272
