Overall:
“These sales figures represent new physical retail sales of hardware, software and accessories, which account for roughly 50 percent of the total consumer spend on games. When taking into account our preliminary estimate for other physical format sales in April such as used and rentals at $76 million, and our estimate for digital format sales including full game and add-on content downloads including microtransactions, subscriptions, mobile apps and the consumer spend on social network games at $267 million, the total consumer spend in April is $802 million.”
- NPDs final assessment of the consumer spend in these areas outside of new physical retail sales will be reported in August in its Q2 2013 Games Market Dynamics: U.S. report.
“Easter typically accounts for a 10% boost in the month in which it occurs. Since Easter occurred in April last year vs. in March this year, it’s difficult to provide a comparison this year to last.”
Hardware:
“The Xbox 360 was the top selling hardware platform, based on unit sales, for 21 months in a row.”
“When looking at month-to-month hardware trends with weeks normalized for the 5 week March period compared to the 4 week April period, we have seen declines hover around 30% over the past few years, while March 2013 to April 2013 declines were slightly higher at 38%.”
Software:
“Despite overall declines, April title launches in 2013 fared better than games that launched in April 2012, up 118% in unit sales and 130% in dollar sales. This increase was driven by games like Injustice: Gods Among Us, Dead Island: Riptide, and Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins.”
“Overall declines are stemming from the performance of games launched prior to April; for example, the decrease in sales performance of March launches. Specifically, when looking at video games launching in March 2012, month 2 sales represented 25% of the total first two months of sales, which contracted to 17% for March 2013 launches. One reason for this might be the decrease in the number of new titles, which can cause sales of a title to be ‘front loaded’ with a greater amount of sales happening in the first month of its release.”
“The top selling game for the month of April was Injustice: Gods Among Us, which is the first time since April 2011 with Mortal Kombat that a fighting game ranked in the top spot.”
Accessories
“Though every accessory type experienced year-over-year declines in April 2013, year-to-date trending increased by over 20% for the combined sales of point cards, headsets/headphones, and All Other Accessories (which includes Skylanders).”
