U.S. Game Sales Up 25% In June 56
Gamasutra is reporting that sales for the gaming industry were up 25% over last year in June. The results were significantly different than those expected by analysts, primarily driven by high demand for Nintendo's DS Lite handheld console and the videogames based on the Disney/Pixar film 'Cars'. From the article: "Figures from Nintendo claim that combined sales of both Nintendo DS hardware iterations amounted to just under 600,000 in June - a figure with which NPD's estimates of 593,000 agree. PSP sales for the month were put at 221,000, with no information yet available for the Game Boy Advance - which had previously beaten both new portable formats in the U.S."
Re:360 Supplies? (Score:1, Informative)
You've been able to walk into any major retailer and pickup a 400 dollar unbundled Xbox 360 since March. You've been able to walk into any retailer and pickup a 400 dollar unbundled Xbox 360 since April.
The sorry fact for Microsoft is there just isn't much demand outside of former Xbox owners for their system. The 360 is selling just under the first Xbox's US sales numbers - it is still around 200-300k less for the first seven months.
No, probably not (Score:2, Informative)
It may be everyone who wants a 360 can now afford one. But apparently not all that many people want 360s. Even now that they're all available, the 360 this month sold less than the PS2 and less than half the rate of the DS.
Now, of course, we're talking about software sales here, and of course all those people buying 360s will want to get games to go with it. But that's also true of the people buying new PS2s and DSes. Meanwhile if we look at the second gamasutra story [gamasutra.com], the one with the game sales numbers, we see
So, the PSP and DS system-unit sales sum to nearly 3 times as much as the 360 sold, and the 360 was able to sell $66 million worth of software to the PSP and DS's $100 million. (This doesn't mean the same proportion of game-units were sold, though, since 360 games tend to cost sometimes up to $60, whereas DS and PSP games are cheaper). The $66 million in software sales isn't all that impressive-- this means, if I'm reading these numbers right ((78 + 158 + 287)/66) that the XBox 360 comprised a mere eight percent (8%) of software sales. Even if we assume that all of that is market growth (that is, we have to assume, probably falsely, that the 8% is entirely new sales and not just sales to people that, had there been no 360, would not have just spent the same amount of money on XBox games) the 8% there isn't enough to explain the 25% increase in sales from last year. It becomes even more clear the 360 is in no way driving software sales when we see:
So of the four games they consider to be the drivers of sales, none are 360 exclusives and only one was available on the 360 at all.
One would normally expect, I imagine, that just six months after launch, a hot new console would be a major driver of game sales. The XBox 360 is somehow not pulling this off.