Retail Game Software Sales Drop 44% In May In U.S.

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U.S. Software sales during the month of May dropped 44% compared to May 2012, the NPG Group reported today. Meanwhile, hardware sales dropped 31%, while total industry sales at retail dropped 25%.

 

“Overall entertainment software declines, down forty-four percent, were driven partly by sharp year-over-year declines within PC games due to poor comparisons to last year’s Diablo 3 release,” said NPD analyst Liam Callahan.

 

“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. 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.”

 

The top-10 best-selling games for the month of April (at retail) were as follows:

 

Rank Title System Publisher
01. Injustice: Gods Among Us 360, PS3, Wii U Warner Bros.
02. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 360, PS3, PC, Wii U Activision Blizzard
03. Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D 3DS Nintendo
04. Dead Island: Riptide
360, PS3, PC Deep Silver
05. Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon 3DS Nintendo
06. Metro: Last Light 360, PS3, PC Deep Silver
07. NBA 2K13 360, PS3, Wii, Wii U, PSP, PC Take 2
08. Bioshock Infinite 360, PS3, PC Take 2
09. Battlefield 3 360, PS3, PC Electronic Arts
10. LEGO Batman 2 360, Wii, DS, PS3, 3DS, Wii U, PSV, PC Warner Bros.

Reporting period: May 5th – June 1st, 2013.

 


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Image of Ishaan Sahdev
Ishaan Sahdev
Ishaan specializes in game design/sales analysis. He's the former managing editor of Siliconera and wrote the book "The Legend of Zelda - A Complete Development History". He also used to moonlight as a professional manga editor. These days, his day job has nothing to do with games, but the two inform each other nonetheless.