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Gibeau says EA mostly ignores NPD reports; NPD knows 'for a fact' major publishers use them
Last year EA went on record calling the NPD's sales reports "a misrepresentation of the entire industry," and this year EA Labels president Frank Gibeau is taking that sentiment one step further, saying EA largely ignores NPD reports."An occasional bad report from NPD, which measures a sliver of what's actually happening in gaming, gives people an erroneous impression," Gibeau tells Games Industry International. "My point is it's an irrelevant measure on the industry. It's totally irrelevant. We don't even really look at it internally anymore."NPD reports track retail games sales from stores such as GameStop and Wal-Mart, but don't provide a comparable breakdown of digital sales. In Q4 2012, EA saw digital sales generate $419 million, while packaged goods made more than double that, with $949 million.David McQuillan, president of NPD Games, is "surprised" by Gibeau's comments for a few reasons, provided in a statement to Joystiq. The first: "While we will not comment on the specifics on our long-standing relationship with EA, we can say with confidence that we have daily dealings with all of our major publisher clients. And we know for a fact they're using the data."The second reason McQuillan cites is the continued prevalence of physical sales, making up 56 percent of industry sales in 2011. "The current games industry is still largely rooted in retail and any industry player involved with AAA content simply can't take their eye away from the retail environment," he writes.NPD Group's David Riley adds, "We do cover digital. Granted, it's not near the level of granularity that we provide via physical point of sale, but physical POS is still huge and needs to be taken seriously. In my opinion, you do a disservice to our industry when you dismiss the value of retail sales research."EA's Digital sales are growing rapidly, Gibeau says, and EA is focused on riding that streaming, cloud-based, downloadable wave into the future, with or without NPD sales reports."We're going to be a 100 percent digital company, period," he says. "It's going to be there some day. It's inevitable."
NPD estimates $3.40B in game sales in Q1 2012
Market research firm NPD Group has released a handful of details about the video game industry's most recent spending habits, showing a sharp decline. Compared to last year's Q1 2011 estimation of $5.9 billion, total consumer spend in the first quarter of 2012 was down to $3.40 billion. With rapidly declining sales, things may continue to get worse before they recover.The 'Q1 2012 Games Market Dynamics: U.S.' report reveals that while spend on new physical software was on the decline versus last year – with Q1 2012 achieving an estimated $1.5 billion spent on new video and PC game software tracked by the NPD Group – total spend on other forms of physical software, such as used games and rentals, only saw a minimal drop."The declines in the physical market for new physical software are well documented," NPD analyst Anita Frazier said, noting that "broader view of the industry" showed other forms of physical spend, specifically the used game and rental market, "declined by just five percent and digital format content sales grew by 10 percent as compared to Q1 2011." The one-two punch of used games and rentals reached an estimated $525 million in Q1 2012, the report says."While the growth in digital format sales does not yet offset the declines in physical format sales, clearly the changes occurring within the industry are reflected in the trends we are seeing in the research," Frazier added.
NPD: Diablo 3 sold a million at retail, Max Payne 3 and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier both sold 400,000
It's a pretty steep drop from top dog to second fiddle in NPD's May tally, apparently. According to a report from Gamasutra, Diablo 3 managed to sell one million physical copies at US retail – a fraction of the 3.5 million in physical and digital sales earned in the first 24 hours.Coming in second and third in May respectively, Max Payne 3 and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier each sold just over 400,000 units.
May NPD reactions: 160K 360s sold, Sony sees 'strong results' from PS3 exclusives [Update: Now with Nintendo statement]
The Xbox 360 sold 160,000 units during the month of May, which represents "a 45 percent share of current-generation console sales" in the United States, according to Microsoft's statement based on NPD data. This makes May the fifteenth consecutive month in which the 360 claimed ownership over 40 (or more) percent of stateside console sales, and the seventeenth month in which Xbox 360 is the best-selling console in the US, according to a statement at The Official Microsoft Blog.When looking at all Xbox 360-related hardware, software and accessories sales for May, the nation spent $209 million on the platform; more than the combined amount spent on "the other two current-generation consoles" over the same period. Save for Diablo 3, nine of the ten best-selling titles during May were available for Microsoft's baby, which probably had something to do with it.Those same nine games were also available on Sony's PlayStation 3, though the Japanese hardware giant has refrained from releasing specific hardware sales information for the period. It did say, however, that PS3-exclusive titles like Starhawk and MLB 12: The Show "again posted strong results," though what "strong" means in numerical terms is anyone's guess. Neither title was featured on NPD's combined platform top ten sales list for the month of May. Sony's complete statement can be found after the break.Update: Nintendo has weighed in with a statement of its own, announcing that the company sold "more than 285,000 units of portable and console hardware" during May. Nintendo's 3DS was the only console that didn't suffer a year-over-year sales decline for the period, according to NPD analyst Anita Frazier.
May NPD: Diablo 3 on top, all hardware (except 3DS) down
Surprising no one based on initial sale numbers provided by Activision Blizzard, Diablo 3 managed to best all comers to establish dominance in the month of May. Blizzard's latest is the first time a PC-only title has graced the top spot on NPD's "new physical retail only" list since July 2010, when StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty launched.Hardware sales are down compared to May 2011. Every console save for the 3DS – which saw a 17% spike in sales compared to last year – saw a decline year-over-year. Hardware saw a 39% drop, bringing in $138.9 million compared to $228.8 million in 2011. According to Microsoft, the Xbox 360 "remains the top-selling console of 2012," with 160,000 units sold.Software sales of new physical media (see: discs you cram into your GameBox) saw less of a drop, and are down 16%, accounting for $335.2 million in sales for the month of May. This is mainly attributed to less software launches this year compared to 2011, though the performance of Diablo 3 definitely helped to soften that blow. Also, for the first time, all of this sales data includes Walmart now.Hit the break for the full list of May's top software titles, which include a few surprises. For one, Modern Warfare 3 is not in the top three. How's that for a surprise?
NPD monthly reports integrate Walmart data starting next month
Every month, the NPD Group releases a report on the previous month's US sales in the game industry, both consoles and software. While that monthly report is already "projected to 100% of the market," according to NPD Group's David Riley, next month, it'll get bolstered by the nation's largest retailer: Walmart. Despite being revealed this past February, the past several months of NPD reports haven't included Walmart's numbers."Our enhanced retail coverage, including the addition of several new retailers, begins with May data released on Thursday, June 14," Riley told me in an email yesterday. While he couldn't supply a list of all of the retailers involved, he told me, "Yes, it does include Walmart."With any luck, the addition of Walmart to NPD's stable of retailers reporting – which already includes America's largest game retailer, GameStop – will help to thwart claims of NPD being a "very poor indicator of the industry's performance." Then again, between the lack of digital sales accounted for in NPD's monthly report and the urge of publishers to spin poor sales numbers, those complaints likely won't stop anytime soon.
NPD Q1 2012: Apple still king of the mobile computing hill thanks to iPad
NPD DisplaySearch is declaring Apple to be the undisputed champion of the mobile PC business for the first quarter of the year. The fruity phone flinger shipped (shipped, not sold) 17.2 million mobile PCs in the time, a figure that contentiously includes the iPad. Second place was taken by HP, which packed off 8.9 million units -- enough to put it at the top of the Laptop-only chart. It's a familiar story over on the tablets leader-board, too. Cupertino pushed out 13.6 million iPads to maintain first place, while Samsung took the silver medal after packing off 1.6 million of its numerous Galaxy slates. Surprisingly, Amazon only needed to ship 900,000 Kindle Fires to take third, although given that the bookseller never discloses its numbers, we have to take that last number with a dash of disbelief.
April NPD: Prototype 2 tops charts, industry-wide sales down 32 percent year-over-year
The results for April are in, and things are looking a little rough out there in consumer video-game electronics land. As a whole, the gaming industry (which for our purposes includes all hardware, software and accessories sales between April 1 and April 28, 2012) brought in $630.4 million, a 32 percent decrease over the same period last year, where its various machinations resulted in collective sales of $930.9 million.Breaking the industry down into its three major components, hardware sales accounted for $189.7 million (down 32 percent year over year), while software sales contributed $292.1 million to the cause – a 42 percent decrease year over year. Accessories, on the other hand, posted a 1 percent increase year-over-year at $148.6 million in 2012, as compared with $147.8 million in 2011.The average amount of money spent on hardware increased year-over-year, however, due in part to the 360 Star Wars Kinect Bundle, according to NPD analyst Anita Frazier. Generally though, the period's lackluster performance is due to the month's release schedule: "Last April, the top seven titles outsold the top-selling title this year, and, simply stated, there were notably fewer new market introductions. I think it's a simple as that because when we see compelling content come into the market, the games are still selling as well as ever – we just saw a lot less this April as compared to last."The list of April's top 10 best-selling titles can be found after the break as per usual, with newcomers Prototype 2 and Kinect Star Wars leading the charge ahead of Modern Warfare 3, Mario Party 9 and Mass Effect 3.Update: According to Microsoft's Major Nelson, the Xbox 360 sold 236K units during April.
Study: One in four iPad customers are new to Apple
Remember the early generation iPods - they were so popular and it seemed like everyone, even non-Mac users, had one? A recent NPD report about the iPad suggests the tablet device is slowly replacing the iPod as the device that gets people into the Apple ecosystem. In its Apple Ecosystem Study, the NPD group says 25 percent of buyers in the US snagged the iPad as their first Apple device. In its heyday, over 70 percent of Apple product owners purchased an iPod as their first Apple device. This number drops to 57 percent when you poll people who bought their first Apple device in the last two years. During this same two year period, the number of people picking an iPad or an iPhone as their first Apple device has climbed to 33 percent. Not surprisingly, this transition is reflected in Apple quarterly sales, which has shown a steady decline in iPod sales and increasing iPad and iPhone sales. [Via AppleInsider]
NPD: 40% of Free-to-play players have bought something
A hefty chunk of free-to-play or "freemium" gamers have spent real dinero on their hobby of choice, according to a new report from the NPD Group. An online survey conducted by the group determined that four out of ten free-to-play gamers have made an in-game payment of some kind. Males are more likely to make such purchases, though females are more likely to have played free-to-play titles.The report contains a few other interesting tidbits. For one, those who make an in-game payment tend to do so within the first month of playing, and those who try free-to-play titles tend to keep playing them, with 84 percent continuing to play after first trying them. Among those who abandon free-to-play titles, men aged 13 to 34 are most likely, while women in general are more likely to stay.Perhaps the most interesting (horrifying?) statistic: data for the survey was gathered from 6,416 respondents aged two and older. Please, keep your two-year-olds away from the smurfberries.
NPD: Binary Domain sold 20K in March
Following its launch on February 28, it seems Binary Domain didn't have a very good March. According to data Joystiq received from the NPD, Sega's sci-fi shooter only sold 20,000 copies during the month. Compare that to the 1.3 million physical copies sold of the other big sci-fi game of March, Mass Effect 3.Of course, Binary Domain had a lot going against it. For one, it's called Binary Domain. There was little-to-no marketing, whereas Mass Effect 3 ads were everywhere and everything you bought came with DLC. In the sci-fi wars of March, 2012, Mass Effect 3 emerged victorious.As the last big boxed product from Sega, this disappointing performance likely contributed to Sega's decision to drastically alter its publishing strategy and issue substantial layoffs worldwide at the end of March.
Mass Effect 3 sales in US hit 1.3 million during launch month
Total Mass Effect 3 sales for its launch month of March were 1.3 million units across Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, the NPD informed Joystiq. The number covers purely new physical retail sales, so no digitally distributed product on PC or PS3 is tallied.Although the NPD doesn't publicly share sales breakdowns by platform, Microsoft executive Aaron Greenberg did share that Xbox 360 sales for the space opera were 943K units for the month.Mass Effect 2 had over a half-million sales on Xbox 360 during its debut month, with another quarter million the following month. We've contacted Electronic Arts for further clarification on Mass Effect 3 sales data.Update: "We think the monthly NPD reports are a very poor indicator of the industry's performance given the proportion of digital sales – including digital downloads via Origin, DLC, mobile and social games and much more – that are not captured in their reports," John Reseburg of EA's corporate communications told Joystiq. "Taking these reports as an accurate snapshot of the industry today is a dangerous assumption."
NPD: Kid Icarus Uprising sold 140K units in March, Resident Evil Revelations sold 122K
The NPD has informed Joystiq that Kid Icarus: Uprising sold approximately 140,000 copies in the US in March. Last night, analyst Anita Frazier reported that "In a list of the top 10 SKU's for the month (as opposed to top titles as listed here), 3DS Kid Icarus: Uprising would have been among the top selling individual SKU's for the month of March." In other words, Kid Icarus was one of the ten best-selling games on a single platform.It's not a Mario-level sales explosion or anything, but certainly not bad for a 3DS debut, and not bad for eight days of sales. By the way, Kid Icarus: Uprising is wonderful.Meanwhile, February release Resident Evil: Revelations sold around 122,000 in March, the NPD told us. All we know about its February performance is that it was somewhere in the top 25 games.Update: We're asking the NPD for clarification regarding the Revelations sales numbers, as questions have arisen as to the possibility that it could be life-to-date rather than March. We'll update accordingly when we hear back.
March NPD: Mass Effect 3 tops sales, year-over-year decline continues
The sales figures for March have arrived, and despite several major, AAA releases, software and hardware sales were still down compared to March of 2011, continuing the year-over-year declines seen in both January and February.Total industry sales during March brought in $1.10 billion, 25 percent less than the same period in 2011. Breaking that total down further, hardware sales accounted for $323.5 million (down 35 percent) while non-PC software sales contributed $553.1 million (down 25 percent) and accessories chipped in $222.5 million (down eight percent).March marked the Xbox 360's thirteenth consecutive month of accounting for over 40 percent of total console sales, selling 371,000 units. It was also the console's fifteenth month as best selling console, and eighth month as best selling overall hardware platform.Predictably, Mass Effect 3 topped sales charts for the period, selling twice as well as Mass Effect 2 did during its January launch in 2010. [Update: It sold 943K on Xbox 360 alone, according to Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg.] BioWare's podium-finish was accompanied by two comparatively less expected releases, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City and MLB 12: The Show. As per usual, head on past the break for the list of March's top ten best selling titles.
Digital gaming soars nine percent, still knows nothing of rarity value
It's already chewed up some big names on the retail scene, but the game-downloading trend shows no sign of being sated. Fresh figures from market research firm NPD show that American digital game sales (including rentals and DLC) amounted to $2.04 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011, which represents a nine percent year-on-year hike at a time when physical game transactions fell three percent. Things are going the same way across the Atlantic, with the UK, France and Germany adding a further $1.29 billion to the burgeoning click-to-buy market. Industry types will surely welcome the news, since digital titles rake in higher margins (hello, PS Store) and reduce the trade in used discs, but what about those of us who'll one day want to swap our dusty copy of Fight Night Round Four for something more subtle?
NPD: $3.3 billion spent outside of new boxed games across regions in Q4 2011
Still in its infancy of tracking and reporting games that aren't new and from a box, the NPD reported sales for the US and key European markets reached $3.33 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011 (Oct. - Dec.). The number covers "used games, game rentals, subscriptions, digital full-game downloads, social network games, downloadable content and mobile games." To be extra clear, that means "everything besides new physical copies of games sold in retail stores."The breakdown of the overall $3.33 billion has the States with a $2.04 billion spend, and the UK, Germany, and France forking over a combined total of $1.29 billion. Despite troubles at retail, UK consumers still dropped $508 million in the region, while Germany and France saw sales of $461 million and $320 million (respectively).NPD usually reports monthly, strictly on US game sales. "Now that we've established our Europe based service covering the UK, France, and Germany, we can begin working directly with clients to help them dissect at deeper levels how the unique market drivers specific to each country can help them understand the increasingly global nature of the games industry," said NPD Euro analyst Sam Naji.It's still hard to contextualize the data since the (publicly shared) tracking of digital spend is still so new. We do know that in 2011 the total spend in the States was around $16.6 billion, with new boxed games at retail reaching $9.3 billion.[Image credit: Digital Storm via Shutterstock]
NPD's top 25 includes at least eight 3DS games
No 3DS games sold enough in the US to place in the top ten last month, according to NPD data. But 3DS sales were happening just under the surface, with many 3DS games making it into the (undisclosed) top 25 games of February.The NPD told Joystiq that "some examples" of the 3DS titles that made the list include Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land, FIFA Soccer, Lego Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars, Lego Pirates of the Caribbean, Resident Evil: Revelations, and Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games -- the last two on that list being February releases.That's ... a significant portion of the top 25. It's also evidence of a reasonably engaged 3DS install base, and therefore stiff competition for the PS Vita, which came out in February. The Vita's Uncharted: Golden Abyss placed somewhere in the top 20 (at least in retail; Vita games also have digital sales not charted by NPD).
February's gaming sales a mixed bag: up for the month, down for the year
At this point, every time NPD releases its numbers, the video game industry collectively holds its breath. The last couple of months have not been kind, as hardware sales continued to drop. But, in February there was finally some good news -- console sales were 87 percent over January. More impressively, that jump only falls to 62 percent if you exclude the Vita. Still, after so many disappointing months, even that stratospheric jump left sales 18 percent lower than the same period last year. Even when taking software into account sales were down 20 percent -- with the industry as a whole raking in just $1.06 billion last month, down from the $1.33 billion the previous February. Individually there was good news for companies, though. Nintendo saw Super Mario Galaxy cross the five million mark, while all of its consoles (the DS, 3DS and Wii) all saw more than 50 percent spikes in their sales compared to January. Meanwhile, Microsoft held on to its number one slot by moving 426,000 Xbox 360s. Hit up the various source links for more info.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning sold 330,000 in the US last month
It was a little surprising to see Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning sitting pretty at number four in the NPD software sales charts for February, an impressive feat for a brand new IP. But what does the number translate to in actual sales? NPD tells Joystiq that Reckoning sold a total of 330,000 copies in the US across Xbox, PS3 and PC last month.It's not a bad number, especially for a new IP, though it isn't quite a blockbuster either. Of course, the figure doesn't include sales in other regions (or even all of North America, for that matter), so we'll have to wait on word from EA to see how Reckoning fared overall.
February NPD: Hardware sales up over January, everything down year over year
The numbers for February are in, and while hardware performance was better than it was in January, both hardware and software sales are seeing significant declines when compared to figures from February 2011.With hardware and software combined, total new video-game sales rang up at $1.06 billion for last month; a 20 percent decline from the $1.33 billion spent during the same period last year. Breaking that total down, hardware sales accounted for $381.4 million of all moneys spent in February, down 18 percent year over year, while software sales accounted for $464.4 million (down 23 percent year over year) and accessories sales brought in $215.2 million, down 16 percent year over year. Despite those year over year declines, hardware sales increased 62 percent over January, Vita sales notwithstanding. Factoring in Sony's new handheld boosts that figure all the way up to 87 percent. On the software front, the Vita's best-selling launch title was Uncharted: Golden Abyss, earning a spot among the month's top 20 overall best-selling titles. The top ten best-selling titles for February can be found after the break, with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning being the only new IP to make the list.
