It’s that time of the month again, NPD numbers. Overall, the big picture isn’t very bright with video game sales down 25 percent year over year (YOY) according to GameSpot. However, it isn’t all doom and gloom as NPD analyst Liam Callahan told GamesIndustry that this decrease is mostly due to the “performance of games launched prior to April.”
For the first time since April 2011, a fighting game topped the top 10 list of physical games sold with Injustice: Gods Among Us leading the way. Deep Silver’s Dead Island: Riptide picked up the second place spot with six of the top ten titles predominantly being sold on Microsoft’s Xbox 360. Only two 3DS titles made the list with Luigi’s Mansion and Lego City Undercover at sixth and ninth, respectively.
With Microsoft releasing their numbers first, alarms went off everywhere as they announced that the Xbox 360 had sold a only 130,000 units. That number is almost half of what was sold during the same time period last year.
Some extrapolation on part of those on NeoGAF puts the PlayStation 3 also over 100,000, with the Wii somewhere between 40 and 50 thousand, and the Wii U somewhere in the range of 30 to 40 thousand. At the bottom of the list is the lonesome PlayStation Vita which saw sales somewhere around 20 thousand, a rather crippling showing. The only hope the Vita still has is it’s compatibility with the upcoming PlayStation 4, but just like the Wii U, unless good software is developed that utilizes the feature, don’t expect things to improve.
While Nintendo didn’t release any specific numbers regarding the 3DS, estimates put it at around 100 thousand units as well.
These next few months will be interesting as the summer void in the video game release schedule continues. Many are saying that all signs now point to the world being ready for next generation consoles. Nintendo may be promoting it’s upcoming lineup in August (which is less than stellar), but it’s going to need to start building up momentum or risk being left behind by the consoles it hoped to get a jump on by releasing a year earlier.
via NeoGAF