U.S. Video Game Sales Up 15.5% in April

kukyfrope writes "According to The NPD Group, game sales are up 15.5% for April 2006 thanks to strong PS2 sales, Xbox 360 availability and the release of popular titles such as Kingdom Hearts II, Oblivion and Tomb Raider: Legend. GameDaily BIZ talks in-depth with analysts Michael Pachter (WMS) and Anita Frazier (NPD) on the current trends of the industry and whether this last month was just a fluke or an upswing for the industry. 'We are completely baffled by the sales trend reversal for current generation software,' said Pachter."

Comments

Xbox 360

[Erwos]

The answer seems clear to me: the huge jump in Xbox 360 sales is starting to drive software sales again. The 360 is finally the best-selling console, and consumers are buying new games for it. If there's continued demand for the 360 (and I doubt they've hit anything near saturation yet), game sales should keep on going up.

We'll see.

-Erwos

Re:Xbox 360

[badasscat]

The answer seems clear to me: the huge jump in Xbox 360 sales is starting to drive software sales again.

The "huge jump" in Xbox 360 sales was only to 295,000 units. 295,000 units in a whole month, after MS said they were shipping more than a million to retailers. And this after there was supposedly so much pent-up demand caused by the shortage. I think a lot of people had assumed there were literally millions of people out there who just couldn't get an Xbox 360; well, now they can, and only 295,000 of them showed up.

It is true that the 100,000 or so extra Xbox 360's sold probably do mean another 150,000 or so games added to the tally for the month too. But from MS's point of view, that's really got to be a pretty disappointing number. They're still barely even outselling the PlayStation 2, for god's sake, a last-generation system, and by MS's own numbers, there's now a whole bunch of unsold inventory out there.

In other words, whether or not this is sustainable is still up in the air.

Re:Xbox 360

[Erwos]

They're outselling the PS2 by 50% - surely, that shouldn't be described as "barely outselling".

As for the low number compared to what we expected, I suspect it's because the supply channel problems were only resolved near the middle of April. There's no serious evidence that there are piles of 360s in shops everywhere - indeed, someone recently mentioned that it was only last week that Newegg was even able to get any.

There's no hard proof that this is sustainable, but after Sony's poor E3 showing, I suspect 360 sales will be even stronger in May. But that's only my opinion...

-Erwos

As for me...

[MudButt]

"'We are completely baffled by the sales trend reversal for current generation software,' said Pachter."

Well, I can tell you that I just bought 6 new gamecube games for myself & the kids for summer break. I can't be the only one getting ready for that, right?

It's so weird

[cdogbert]

Every time a string of quality games are released that a lot of people like, sales go up! It's baffling!

I dunno

[UES]

"'We are completely baffled by the sales trend reversal for current generation software,' said Pachter."

Yeah, it's a real question for the ages

LOWER PRICE POINT FOR CURRENT GEN

why are so many people in such a rush to buy games lately?

LOWER PRICE POINT FOR CURRENT GEN

Surely the greatest minds in the country should attach this vast problem.

LOWER PRICE POINT FOR CURRENT GEN

If only there was some kind of economic analysis possible, perhaps some kind of law of supply and/or demand that says what happens when demand is high and prices come down.

Right...

[Brothernone]

Well, lets hope they actually take this as a clue that GOOD QUALITY and FUN are what drive game sales. This is not the movie industry, we are not going to spend money on shit we don't want. The sooner the publishers and producers figure this out, the happier we'll all be. Then we'll also have games WORTH spending the money on again.