Thursday, May 10, 2012

April 2012 NPD Results

I hate to end the day on a sour note after we've been having so much fun, but I must. Last month, sales were pitiful. The trend continues with April's NPD results. Let's see how bad they are.


Did you know that the top seven titles of April 2011 all outsold the number one game of this April? It's true. This means both versions of Prototype 2 (there was a Prototype 1?) sold less than 236,000 copies. Some find this hilarious. I don't find the industry doing poorly funny, but I might not be one who wants to watch the world burn either. My shake-my-head award goes to Kinect Star Wars at number two which proves that if you market your product and shove it down people's throats, they will buy it. Kinect continues its dominance in the industry. I must say, I can sort of see why people feared the Wii. I'm doing the same with Kinect. If that's the future, count me out. In other news, Tiger Woods may be doing poorly in real life but his golf games still do well, Mario Party 9 stays at the number seven spot, and Just Dance 3 returns to the top ten. A horrible month for sales.

2 comments:

Matt Sainsbury said...

Does the NPD count digital download sales yet? Because if it doesn't, with digital downloads accounting for more and more of sales of course the numbers at retail is going to reduce. People aren't going to spend $100 in digital downloads and $100 at retail. It'll be a mix of the two. So retail will no longer get the $100.

Xenoblade also likely sold well, but because it was only sold through one shop, NPD didn't count it.

Unknown said...

No, digital sales are not counted. With the stellar sales of Minecraft on XBLA and various other goodies added to NPD, the outlook for the industry would be much better.