August Videogame Sales Jump 17.5 Percent

According to The NPD Group, EA Sports sold over 2 million copies of "Madden NFL 07" in its first week and generated $100 million in revenue, which helped boost videogame software sales 17.5 percent over last year and 5 percent up from July. Over software sales raked in $397 million in August with Capcom's "Dead Rising" and Square Enix' "Dirge of Cerebrus: Final Fantasy VII" topping the charts. While current generation game sales declined $56 million to $249 million, next generation software sales increased by $116 million to $148 million.

Overall game software unit sales were up 15 percent for the year. Year-to-date game sales (which excludes PC games) are up 4 percent to $3.105 billion, which is solid considering most analysts expected this year to be slow with the ongoing transition to next generation technology. The NPD Group did announce a correction to its July videogame software figures, which were down 2.2 percent to $378 million (from $386 million) because of a reporting error. But even that glitch still makes the traditionally slow summer months a success.

August sales were up 5 percent from July sales and September starts the real rush for big games as the holiday season approaches. Nine games topped sales of 100,000 units for the month, and that didn't include THQ's "Saints Row," which has been selling briskly but shipped at the end of the month. The launches of PlayStation 3 and Wii this November will also give a boost to the game industry heading into Q4.

The U.S. installed base of next generation consoles (which includes Xbox 360, Nintendo DS and PSP) is 14 million through the end of August. Microsoft has sold 2.4 million Xbox 360s through August and videogame analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbish Morgan Securities expects there to be 5 million Xbox 360s in U.S. homes by the end of this year. Microsoft sold over $89 million worth of Xbox 360 games last month.

Comments

[PS3 Froum]

The console war invariably comes down the software released. people go on about hardware specs.. but who cares. If the games are good that is all that matters.....

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