NPD February 2012

[Acert93]

Someone on Ars summarized the data from NeoGafhttp://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=462606.

4- week month; January retail reporting period 1/29/12 through 2/25/12

Software
01. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (360, PS3, Wii, PC)** Activision Blizzzard
02. Final Fantasy XIII-2 (PS3, 360)** Square Enix Inc.
03. UFC Undisputed 3 (360, PS3) THQ
04. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (360, PS3, PC) Electronic Arts
05. Just Dance 3 (Wii, 360, PS3) Ubisoft
06. NBA 2K12 (360, PS3, PSP, Wii, PC, PS2) Take 2 Interactive
07. Soul Calibur V (360, PS3)** Namco Bandai Games
08. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (360, PS3, PC)** Bethesda Softworks
09. Twisted Metal 2012 (PS3) Sony
10. Battlefield 3 (360, PS3, PC)** Electronic Arts

**(includes CE, GOTY editions, bundles, etc. but not those bundled with hardware)

And from the Ars thread they mention: "Separately, MS says it sold 426k 360s in Feb, and was #1 for the month.

From Nintendo:
Nintendo 3DS: 262,000
Wii: 228,000
Nintendo DS: 135,000"

 

[Arwin]

Yeah majornelson just tweeted that 426k figure

 

[patsu]

Cool ! I was wondering how well FFXIII-2 and Twisted Metal sold. ^_^

Glad they charted.

 

[Acert93]

Yeah majornelson just tweeted that 426k figure

That is a big jump from January's 270k. Current gen meltdown averted?

 

[Mboojigga]

That is a big jump from January's 270k. Current gen meltdown averted?

It was too early to claim either way being just one month in the new year after the holiday sales. 535,000 is what it sold for February 2011. They got room to work with as far as price goes. One month wasn't a need for a crisis.

 

[AlphaWolf]

That is a big jump from January's 270k. Current gen meltdown averted?

Jan 12 compared to Jan 11 = -111,000 (-29%)
Feb 12 compared to Feb 12= -109,000 (-20%)

Not really a significant improvement, but less catastrophic than the near 50% drop in Wii sales. It would seem they may need a price drop or some major releases to reach 2011 levels which did set a pretty high bar.

 

[patsu]

The GAF sales thread has more updates if you're interested in this sort of things...

Missing in Action
-Resident Evil: Revelations (3DS)
-Uncharted: Golden Abyss (Vita) (confirmed to be in top 20)
-Syndicate (PS3/360)
-The Darkness 2 (PS3/360)

Estimated Hardware #
Xbox 360 - 426K (-20.4%)
PlayStation 3 - 360K (-11%) (PR Math)
Nintendo 3DS - 262K
Nintendo Wii - 228K (-50%)
PlayStation Vita - 218K (PR Math)
Nintendo DS - 135K

Game software sales were $485.7 million, down 24 percent. NPD estimates consumers spent another $500 million to $600 million on digitally disributed games, rentals, subscriptions, add-on content and used games during the month.

 

[eastmen]

MS is most likely going to save the price drop for the fall. I also heard strong rumors of a gpu/cpu/edram single chip solution refresh later in the year. I bet these two things will happen at the same time.

 

[RobertR1]

Good 360 numbers. Hope ME3 lights up the chart and brings up the HW for March.

 

[TheChefO]

Good 360 numbers...

Surprisingly good across the board really.

Still down yoy, but seriously, this gen is long overdue for replacement.

I'm surprised there are still this many people (786k) new to xb360 and ps3 ...

 

[Rangers]

Last Feb numbers were shockingly high too. It ended up being decided tax returns are the reason so this shouldn't have been shocking and every bodies still down YoY.

Looking overall though, the crash of the Wii has a lot to do with it, and this gen is getting long in the tooth too, so perhaps it shouldn't surprise.

I also think digital cant be ignored. Somewhat unnoticed but interesting to me was how Alan Wake American Nightmare was MS's first major exclusive that debuted digitally. Sony has had moves in that direction as well. PC sales are already mostly digital (saw recently that in USA 70% of Witcher 2's sales were digital, although in eastern europe it's still overwhelmingly retail), is console slowly trending there? I think some people are too quick to cry crash and doom and gloom looking at these boxed retail only numbers. People seem to love to be pessimistic.

Glad to see we at least got decent hardware numbers quickly this time. Thanks to the return of Nintendo PR. I can even go back and tweak the estimations I have for Wii and PS3 last month (which were already pretty accurate) a bit since Nintendo gave us month over month percentage increases. I believe I had Wii estimated at 148k last month with the help of GAF and by this month's Nintendo numbers the real figure was 152k, so pretty close.

360 gained ~200k on Wii LTD this month, IIRC around 130k last month so +330k on the year. I've been following this for a couple years now, but a nasty thought struck me, once WiiU comes out we may soon stop getting Wii numbers ala PS2, so I may never know when 360 passes Wii in the USA . Unless MS puts out PR at that time or something.

Wish we had more software numbers, hardware info good this month, software info bad.

For the numbers, Vita strikes me as lackluster but expected, PS3 had a real solid month, those are the only ones that jump out. That and Wii's continued decimation.

 

[Arwin]

I thought I saw NPD estimate that about another same amount was spent on digital purchases as retail software. So the software sales in this report are half of the total store and dd combined.

 

[kagemaru]

Great PS3 and 360 sales, higher than I expected.

Happy to see TM charting, sold more than I thought it would.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

I'm surprised there are still 228,000 people that think it's good idea to purchase a Wii at this time.

 

[AlNom]

I'm surprised there are still 228,000 people that think it's good idea to purchase a Wii at this time.

Clearly just replacing overused units.

Clearly.

 

[Acert93]

I don't own a TV (making a Wii hard to use) but I can see the appeal as a library of fun, family friendly social games. It is hard to find anything comparable to, say, Mario Kart, on the other consoles.

 

[Arwin]

A colleague got one the other day. She came to me for advice as she wanted to play the Mario she knew from when she played a gameboy with her brother (Nintendo messed up launching consoles in Europe back then so we mostly only know handhelds). I recommended NSMB and she reported back very happy. Indoctrinate them young and they stay loyal forever.

A few days ago I also saw a family buy a Wii in a game store, and a kid having trouble buying a Wii game because they were just out of reach of his current savings. I recommended him to check online and also the eStore but he ended up buying Sonic.

There are a lot of Wii out there, and it's still one of the best platforms to buy Nintendo games on, so it will keep selling until after the Wii U is out.

 

[RobertR1]

Top 10 individual SKU's, confirmed on gaf:

01. Just Dance (Wii)
02. Twisted Metal (PS3) - 221K
03. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (360)
04. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (360)
05. UFC Undisputed (360)
06. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (PS3)
07. Final Fantasy XIII-2 (PS3) - ~210K
08. NBA2k12 (360)
09. UFC Undisputed (PS3)
10. The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (360) - 135K

 

[Rangers]

Only 11k between #2 and #7?

 

[Miksu]

Isn't it time for NPD March 2012 -thread?