June NPD: 3DS still on top, Ouya sales 'light' [update]
The NPD Group has published its monthly report outlining the performance of the physical sector of the video games retail market, with unsurprising results with respect to both the industry's overall performance and which games sold the most between June 2 and July 6. Nintendo's 3DS remained the best-selling piece of hardware for its second month in a row with "nearly 225,000" units sold according to Nintendo, while the Xbox 360 held its spot as the best-selling home console by moving 140,000 units.
The overall industry brought in $593.3 million from the sale of hardware, software and accessories (read: Skylanders toys and digital currency giftcards) at brick and mortar retail locations. This was a 15 percent year-over-year decrease from the $700.6 million the industry brought in during the same period in 2012.
The hardware sales segment and its collectively accumulated $142 million suffered the most severe year-over-year loss out of the three subsections, down by 30 percent from last year's $201.5 million.
June was also the first month of availability for the Ouya, the Kickstarter-funded Android microconsole that kicked off a growing craze for Kickstarter-funded Android microconsoles. "Retail sales for Ouya (not counting direct sales through ouya.tv) and were relatively light for a new console," an NPD analyst Liam Callahan said in a statement. "This may be due to the lack of a major marquee title driving consumers to seek out the console, low awareness due to Ouya being a new brand, or low inventory volume due to manufacturing constraints."
The period's 10 best-selling games were lead by three different console exclusives: The Last of Us, Animal Crossing: New Leaf and the physical SKU for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition. New physical sales of console and portable games in general were down 10 percent from last year, ringing up $296.1 million at the end of the period.
The Last of Us (PS3)
Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS)
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition (360)
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (360, PS3, PC, Wii U)
NBA 2k13 (360, PS3, WII, NWU, PSP, PC)
Injustice: Gods Among Us (360, PS3, Wii U)
Donkey Kong Country Returns (3DS, WII)
Deadpool (360, PS3)
Battlefield 3 (360, PS3, PC)
Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon (3DS)
Update: In response to today's NPD data, Ouya CEO Jule Uhrman has said, "Nobody thinks much about NPD numbers since we all know they miss critical data including reporting from digital retailers or company sites. OUYA sold every unit available launch week and are currently still chasing demand."
