US Games Industry in June Blues but Xbox Slim Saves Hardware

While Red Dead Redemption managed to add another near million sales to its 1.5m total sales in May, and Mario Galaxy 2 managed to combine May and June to become a post-million seller, US games total (hardware, software and peripherals) sales were down in June compared down 6% to $1.1b year-on-year.

While game sales were down 15% year on year, hardware - and the release of the Xbox 360 S, saw sales lift a boost of 35% compared to the same period in 2009.

June accessories sales rose 6% year-on-year - the Xbox 360 1600 MS points card was the top seller.

NPD's Anita Frazier commented, "Unfortunately, the industry realised a decline versus the same time period last year, driven by decreases in sales of portable hardware and console and portable software

“A bright spot was sales of console hardware, which increased 35 per cent in unit sales over last June, driven by significant increases in Xbox 360 and PS3 sales.

“Given the strong slate of content still to come, and the release of the Move and Kinect controllers, which I believe will spark additional interest in gaming, I think we could see the total year new physical retail sales come in at $20 billion."

US June 2010 Hardware Sales
Console
Xbox 360 451.7k
Wii 422.5k
PlayStation 3 304.8k

Handheld
Nintendo DS 510.7k
PSP 121.0k

US Top 5 Games June 2010
Red Dead Redemption - Xbox 360 - Take-Two 582.9k
Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Wii - Nintendo 548.4k
Red Dead Redemption - PS3 - Take-Two 380.3k
New Super Mario Bros. Wii - Wii - Ninte