DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Welcome to another monthly edition of the NPD Game Console Sales Analysis, this time analyzing the home based game console hardware and software sales for the month of June 2011. We’re once again one console short of having all the hardware sales statistics, and once again, it’s Sony that’s the lone holdout. But thanks to information released by the other manufacturers, mainly Microsoft, we can still estimate fairly accurately what Sony’s PS3 hardware sales numbers look like, and so the NPD analysis feature can continue for one more month. For those that are new to this, this analysis looks at US video games sales figures compiled by NPD, unreleased by NPD due to pressure from the gaming companies, but then leaked by various sources, including gaming companies, if/when it suits them.

The figures for US sales in June 2011 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (June 2010 figures also shown, including percentage change):

• Xbox 360: 507,000 (Total: 27.8 million; June 2010: 451,700 – up 12%)
• PS3: 276,000 (estimated) (Total: 17.1 million; June 2010: 304,800 – down 9%)
• Wii: 273,000  (Total: 35.9 million; June 2010: 422,500 – down 35%)

NPD June 2011 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of June 2011)

My prediction from last month was:

No big changes, so the same hardware ordering as this month. The new top selling games will be Infamous 2 and Duke Nukem Forever (on a side note, ‘Forever’ really is such an apt name for the game considering the development time), but the overall top sellers will be some of the same titles as in May.

If my estimation of PS3 hardware sales is correct, then I was wrong about the ordering of hardware sales, although it was a close run affair between the PS3 and the Wii. Software wise, both Duke Nukem Forever and Infamous 3 made their marks on the top 10, but more on that later.

Starting with the PS3 hardware estimation, I think it’s best I go over the estimation process, which ironically, were mostly based on statements made by Microsoft, since Sony made no mention of their hardware results this month. It all comes from the slightly vague Microsoft statement about having a “48% share of the overall current-generation console market share”. It’s vague because when Microsoft talks about “current-generation”, it’s unclear if they’re referring to all consoles, or just the home based consoles, but it should be the latter, since the former won’t make sense. And Microsoft should also be talking about June only, since for life-time wise, and even 2011-wise, the “48%” market share just doesn’t add up. And armed with the “knowledge”, and knowing both the Xbox 360 and Wii’s hardware stats, it’s then quite easy to estimate the PS3’s hardware sales number for June, which comes to around 276,000. And Microsoft’s other statement about nearly selling twice as many units as their nearest competitor seems to support this number, since any higher, and Microsoft wouldn’t have been able to make the claim without stretching the meaning of the term “nearly”.

At first glance, this seems to be a good result for Sony. PS3 hardware sales are up more than 100,000 units compared to the previous month, and it did beat the Wii, if the numbers are correct. So why didn’t Sony (loudly) pronounce these set of good results, and instead, went all quiet in their press release in regards to the hardware numbers? I can only guess is that there was no year-on-year growth for the PS3 in June, as June 2010 recorded higher sales for the console. If my estimation is correct, this breaks a 4 month trend in which the PS3 has seen year-on-year growth, and perhaps this is what Sony didn’t want to focus on (especially, given the PSN hack, media “hacks” will jump to the conclusion that the breaking of the trend is a direct result of the hacking outage). But more careful analysis shows that June 2010 was a better than usual month for the PS3, which I attributed back then to the clearing up of the PS3 stock shortage problem that hurt sales for the console throughout the first half of 2010 (June 2010 was 85% higher than June 2009). So for the PS3 to not perform as well in June 2011 as in June 2010, is really no big deal, and the decline was mild anyway, nothing like that of say, the Wii.

Which brings us to the Wii. 35% down compared to the same month last year, and nothing really positive can be said of the Wii, other than the fact that, for such a technologically inferior console, it’s done remarkably well and surely has already made Nintendo enough money. And with the Wii U already announced, the Wii’s results will become less and less important for Nintendo as they concentrate on the development of the Wii U.

And last, but certainly not the least, we have the tremendous Xbox 360 numbers. Nearly double that of last month’s results, and the only console yet again to show year-on-year growth. This is made more remarkable by the fact that, this time last year, the new “Slim” model came out, and the sales bump associated with it meant that it was always unlikely that the Xbox 360 would have any sort of year-on-year growth, but here we are. Now, some of this can be attributed to various bundling deals Microsoft had, including the deal where selected PC purchases get a free Xbox 360, and the fact that the “Slim” didn’t go on sale until midway through June 2010. So next month, we could see the first ever year-on-year sales decline for the Xbox 360 in quite  a while (versus last year’s sales bump), although it’s still a shoe-in to win the best selling console of the month award. Regardless, it’s been an impressive year for the Xbox 360, and the “Slim” has been a huge success, since it now makes the Xbox 360 the most balanced console in terms of price, performance (no more RRoD!), and audience (both hardcore and casual/family gamers are well catered for).

Onto software sales, or games. L.A. Noire retains top spot, as the new releases, Duke Nukem Forever and the PS3 exclusive Infamous 2 could not unseat the crime solving game. While Sony was remaining tight lipped about the PS3 hardware numbers, they rightly made a big deal about the performance of Infamous 2, which although third, is still the highest single-platform performer for June. It certainly did better than its predecessor, released in May 2009, and ranked only 5th, even though the chart back then was split based on platform specific releases, not like this month’s chart, which combines all platform sales for the same title as one listing. And releasing an exclusive earlier in the month, as opposed to in the last few days, does help it to climb the ranks. The other notable new entries for this month include the 3DS version of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Disney’s Cars 2. Here’s the full software sales chart for June:

1. L.A Noire (Take 2, Xbox 360, PS3)
2. Duke Nukem Forever (Take 2, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
3. Infamous 2 (Sony, PS3)
4. Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (Disney, Wii, Xbox 360, NDS, PS3, 3DS, PSP, PC)
5. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (Nintendo, 3DS)
6. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, NDS,PC)
7. NBA 2K11 (Take 2, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP, PC)
8. Mortal Kombat 2011 (Warner Bros. Interactive, PS3, Xbox 360)
9. Cars 2 (Disney, NDS, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
10. Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft, Wii)

Time to make the usual prediction. As mentioned earlier, I think the Xbox 360 will experience its first year-on-year decline in ages, but still comfortably stay at the top of the home based console hardware sales charts, leaving the Wii and PS3 to fight it out for second and third place, and I think the Wii might be better positioned to win for some reason. It’s NCAA Football season again, so it will be the top seller, but otherwise, not a huge month for games again.

See you next month.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 21st, 2011 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, NPD Analysis, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.