In the month of February the videogame industry proved once again to be recession proof. The sale of videogames, hardware and accessories jumped 10 percent to $1.47 billion. The sales were driven by Nintendo products and Capcom’s Street Fighter IV.
Hardware sales alone hit $532.7 million, an 11 percent increase. The Nintendo Wii lead the way with 753K units sold, while the DS followed with 588K sold.
The Xbox360 again lead the way over the PS3 with 391K sold. The PS3 sold 276K, down from 281K a year prior, while the PSP sold 199K.
NPD analyst Anita Frazier had this to say.
The Xbox 360 realized its biggest non-holiday sales month, save for September 2007, when the Halo 3 release brought in a large group of new owners. Compared to last month, the PS3 realized the greatest month-over-month unit sales increase of all platforms.
Software sales rose 9 percent to $733.5 million. The Wii Fit for another month topped the charts but Street Fighter IV sold the most units across the Xbox 360 and PS3 with 849K total.
Killzone 2 for the PS3 sold just 323K units, but was released at the very end of the month. The March results will give a better perspective on how this game affected the Hardware and Software sales.
Consumers picked up nearly 20 million units of video game software in February, a 14 percent increase over February 2008,” said Frazier. “The average retail price for games is 4 percent lower than last year, which is why the dollar sales increase is not quite keeping in pace with the increase in unit sales.
Accessories revenue is up 13 percent to $207.1 million.
Source: Edge Online