NEWS /

Video Game Sales Soar 57 Percent in March

18 Apr, 2008, 10:47 pm IST | by AP |

Led by stellar sales of Nintendo's games and systems, U.S. retail sales of video games jumped 57 percent to $1.7 billion in March, market researcher NPD Group reported Thursday.

"You'd never know that the U.S. economy was under distress by looking at the video games industry sales figures," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier in an e-mail.

Video game software sales jumped 63 percent from March 2007 to $945.6 million, blowing past analysts' expectations. Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter, for one, had expected game software sales to grow 47 percent over last year.

Nintendo's "Super Smash Bros: Brawl" for the Wii was the month's top-selling game with 2.7 million units sold.

Coming in a distant second was "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2" from Ubisoft with 752,300 units and "Army of Two" from Electronic Arts Inc. with 606,100. All three games hit store shelves in March.

Hardware sales grew 46 percent to $551.3 million from $377.9 million, with Nintendo's Wii and portable DS far outselling every other system. The Japanese company grabbed 58 percent of the game hardware market during the month as Wii shortages seemed to abate.

Americans bought 721,000 Wiis during the month, 67 percent more than in February. The DS was the second best-selling system with 698,000 units, and Sony Corp.'s handheld PSP came in a distant third with 297,000.

Game accessories, at times an overlooked category, reaped in $220 million, up 58 percent from a year earlier. Xbox Live points and subscription cards were among the top-selling accessories in March, along with the PS3 wireless controller, Frazier said.

"Grand Theft Auto IV," one of the year's most highly anticipated games, goes on sale April 29 and should boost sales of both Microsoft's Xbox 360 and the PS3. Microsoft said some "key" U.S. retailers were still experiencing Xbox 360 shortages going into March, but by the time GTA IV launches shelves should be fully stocked.
RELATED STORIES

Windows 8 likely to support Adobe Flash

Windows 8 likely to support Adobe Flash

About eight months back, when Microsoft introduced its Windows 8 Metro UI, it was almost clear that the company’s Metro version........

Dell Latitude 10, first Windows 8 tablet shows up

Microsoft's programme to incubate 10 Indian start-ups in cloud computing

Giant radio telescope gets split location

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201 Review

Top 5 potential Gmail alternatives

Yahoo! Axis reportedly slowing down IE9

 

Leaked Images, Availability, Pricing,
Specs, Pre-order

Photos

High Court Order - Madras

High Court Order - Madras

17 May, 2012, 04:22 PM

2.3

Trials Evolution

Trials Evolution

12 May, 2012, 10:33 AM

Sniper Elite V2

Sniper Elite V2

09 May, 2012, 10:04 PM

3.3

MORE PHOTOS

OPINIONS

Padmini Harchandrai

The latest "should they-shouldn't they" event with Facebook is the lift of the minimu...

MORE OPINIONS

features

Portable Wi-Fi Drives for your smartphone

Portable Wi-Fi Drives for your smartphone

Fed up of the limited storage on your mobile device? Here are some devices

By Aaron Almeida

Top 5 potential Gmail alternatives

Top 5 potential Gmail alternatives

Google’s Gmail service is arguably the most advanced and feature-packed...

By Naina Khedekar

Five ways to beat the petrol hike

Five ways to beat the petrol hike

Petrol prices went up by a considerable amount post Wednesday, and this...

By Karan Shah

MORE FEATURES

On video: HTC One V

On video: HTC One V

18 May, 2012, 04:44 AM

4.5

On video: Cowon Z2 (16GB)

On video: Cowon Z2 (16GB)

15 May, 2012, 04:58 PM

2.3

On video: Samsung WB150F

On video: Samsung WB150F

08 May, 2012, 04:23 AM

5.0

MORE VIDEOS

776 views

1129 views

630 views

MORE WALLPAPERS