Things haven't been looking too hot for the US video games market this past month. Physical software sales in May were down 44 per cent year-on-year, while new game launches generated nowhere near as much money as they did the year before. Is the summer drought to blame? NPD Group thinks it's more to do with the PC.
According to the stats tracker, the PC games market experienced a "sharp year-over-year declines ... due to poor comparisons to last year's Diablo 3 release." Despite a strong surge in 3DS software sales - a 60 per cent rise which contributed to the handheld also topping the hardware chart for the month - generally new game launches were relatively weak in the month of May.
"Softness in new physical entertainment software sales stemmed from a decline in the number of new launches, with over 30% fewer new SKUs, as well as poor performance of the new SKUs that were released," the NPD report said.
"New SKUs generated over seventy percent less units on a per-SKU basis, and a decrease of over eighty percent revenue per SKU... Overall new launch performance in May'13 was poor, down 84% in units, decreasing 88% in dollars, which was driven by PCs and Consoles as new launches for portables were up 5% in units, and down only 7% in dollars."
It's worth noting that NPD does not track digital game sales.
Via CVG
According to the stats tracker, the PC games market experienced a "sharp year-over-year declines ... due to poor comparisons to last year's Diablo 3 release." Despite a strong surge in 3DS software sales - a 60 per cent rise which contributed to the handheld also topping the hardware chart for the month - generally new game launches were relatively weak in the month of May.
"Softness in new physical entertainment software sales stemmed from a decline in the number of new launches, with over 30% fewer new SKUs, as well as poor performance of the new SKUs that were released," the NPD report said.
"New SKUs generated over seventy percent less units on a per-SKU basis, and a decrease of over eighty percent revenue per SKU... Overall new launch performance in May'13 was poor, down 84% in units, decreasing 88% in dollars, which was driven by PCs and Consoles as new launches for portables were up 5% in units, and down only 7% in dollars."
It's worth noting that NPD does not track digital game sales.
Via CVG
Companies:
Nintendo
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