March 2012 NPD - software, hardware, accessories, analysis (Kid Icarus: Uprising success)

- Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure was the 15th best-selling title for the month
- the three character pack SKU’s were all among the top 10 accessory items for the month
- total game industry sales dropped 25 percent to $1.1 billion
- total software across consoles, portable and PC fell 26 percent to $585.1 million
- hardware sales fell 35 percent to $323.5 million.
- XX. Kid Icarus - 135K
- XX. Super Mario 3D Land - 100K
- XX. Mario Kart 7 - 118K
- XX. Mario Party 9 - 230K

Lifetime:

- SM3DLand: 1.98 Million
- MK7: 1.58 Million


Hardware

- Nintendo 3DS - 225K (-43.8%)
- Nintendo Wii - 175K (-39.7%)

"Overall

“While it was a disappointing month, and first quarter, for new physical retail sales of video games hardware, software and accessories, it wasn’t entirely unexpected given guidance we’ve seen from several sources.”

“Outside of new physical retail sales, we find that the consumer spend on content on used games, rentals, subscriptions, mobile games, social network games, digital full game downloads and add-on content accounted for an additional $2.5 billion to $2.7 billion across the U.S., U.K., France & Germany in Q1 2012.”

Hardware

“Hardware really slowed down this month and all systems saw a unit sales decline versus last March, and on an average sales per week basis, versus February 2012. That said, the high definition console systems fared better than many other hardware platforms.”

“The Xbox 360 is the best-selling console system for the last 15, and the best-selling hardware platform overall for the past 8 months.”

Software

“High definition platform unit sales of software were flat to last year which is a bright spot in this month’s reporting. “

“Mass Effect 3 sold more than twice as much as did Mass Effect 2 during its introductory month in January 2010.”

“In a list of the top 10 SKU’s for the month (as opposed to top titles as listed here), 3DS Kids Icarus: Uprising would have been among the top selling individual SKU’s for the month of March.”

“Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure was the 15th best-selling title for the month. The accessory items are selling phenomenally well. The three character pack SKU’s were all among the top 10 accessory items for the month of March.”

Accessories

“Accessories were up slightly in unit sales for the month, but down in dollars due to a decline in average retail selling price. Interestingly, among the top ten accessory SKU’s for the month, only three were “traditional” accessories while the remainder were either point or subscription cards, or Skylanders character packs.”

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