It was another down month for new video games sales at retail in the United States, though that's nothing new to anyone following the industry.
Revenues were down 25% in October compared to the same period last year, bringing in an estimated $755.5 million, according to the NPD Group.
The brightest spot of the month was Take 2's basketball game NBA 2K13, which was the top-selling title for the month. NBA 2K13 continues the retro theme begun by 2K11, and it outsold last year's incarnation by 60 percent, undoubtedly in part due to last year's league lockout preventing actual NBA games from being played.
Activision, as expected, has another hit with Skylanders Giants, the sequel to last year's Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure. While the NPD Group doesn't provide sales figures, it did say that sales were up 160% in its debut month versus the original's debut last year.
Even more impressive were the sales of Skylanders toy accessories: The group says that Skylanders accessories sold nearly 4 times as much this month as they had sold during the original game's debut.
As always, it is worth noting that the rise of digital sales has been eating away at the retail video game industry. While this month's $755.5 million in revenues was down compared to the same period last year, the group estimates the total was more along the lines of $1.2 billion when factoring in digital sales, subscriptions, rentals, and other related spend on video games in the country.
The top ten games sold at U.S. retail in October, with SKUs combined, were as follows:
1. NBA 2K13
2. Resident Evil 6
3. Pokemon Black Version 2
4. Dishonored
5. Pokemon White Version 2
6. Madden NFL 13
7. FIFA Soccer 13
8. Medal of Honor: Warfighter
9. Borderlands 2
10. Skylanders Giants
"As always, it is worth noting that the rise of digital sales has been eating away at the retail video game industry. While this month's $755.5 million in revenues was down compared to the same period last year, the group estimates the total was more along the lines of $1.2 billion when factoring in digital sales, subscriptions, rentals, and other related spend on video games in the country."
So "rentals, and other related spend on video games in the country" are now counted as "digital sales"? Sounds desperate.
Apart from this, are the $755.5 million hardware, software and accessory revenues or only software revenues?
How did hardware, software and accessories perform individually compared to last year? This NPD article leaves more questions then usual.
EDIT: Looked the numbers up on other sites, the $755.5 million seem to be the whole video game revenues, but as I understand, the 25% decline was software only, hardware dropped 37%.
Hi Christian. The $755.5M was industry-wide new video game-related sales at retail: hardware, software, and accessories. That is down from $1B or, just as we reported, 25%. Software-only decline was also (coincidentally) 25%.
And no, rentals etc. are not counted as digital, that's a combined figure. The breakdown of NPD's estimates were as follows:
Thanks for the clarification. But as hardware is reported to be down 37% , was there such an upspike in accessories, to reach industry wide -25%?
Higher sales for Skylander then last year most likely mean higher sales for Skylander figurines, so this could be an explanation.
If Digital was an estimated $359M, how does this compare to october 2011? The article says the "rise of digital sales is eating away at the retail video game industry", were digital sales so much lower 12 month ago? To compensate the retail loss, they had to be about 50% lower, as retail sales are 25% down and digital sales are 50% of what retail sales are.
So "rentals, and other related spend on video games in the country" are now counted as "digital sales"? Sounds desperate.
Apart from this, are the $755.5 million hardware, software and accessory revenues or only software revenues?
How did hardware, software and accessories perform individually compared to last year? This NPD article leaves more questions then usual.
EDIT: Looked the numbers up on other sites, the $755.5 million seem to be the whole video game revenues, but as I understand, the 25% decline was software only, hardware dropped 37%.
And no, rentals etc. are not counted as digital, that's a combined figure. The breakdown of NPD's estimates were as follows:
Retail: $755.5M
Digital: $359M
"Other physical" (used and rentals, mainly): $101M
Higher sales for Skylander then last year most likely mean higher sales for Skylander figurines, so this could be an explanation.
If Digital was an estimated $359M, how does this compare to october 2011? The article says the "rise of digital sales is eating away at the retail video game industry", were digital sales so much lower 12 month ago? To compensate the retail loss, they had to be about 50% lower, as retail sales are 25% down and digital sales are 50% of what retail sales are.