Game Sales Unexpectedly Rocket 32% in March

by Vladimir Cole { Apr 15th 2005 at 8:39PM }

NPD Group Logo According to a new report by the NPD Group, a company that researches consumer purchase trends, video game sales for the month of March rose 32% year-over-year thanks to improved hardware availability, the launch of the PSP, and heavy consumer demand for games like Gran Turismo 4.

That solidly trounces estimates by analysts who predicted slower growth of 5% to 15%.

We can't find the report yet, so here's what we're culling from various second-hand analyses.

The PSP sold 620,000 handheld units and 1.1 million software units in March (compare that with the Nintendo DS's sales of 420,000 in 2005 year to date). Remember, the PSP launched on March 24th. That means that Sony sold nearly one PSP per second in the first 8 days of the handheld's launch.
495,000 PS2 console units sold in March vs. Xbox sales of 227,000, though Microsoft and analysts note low inventory availability for the Xbox probably contributed to that console's relative weakness in sales.
Gran Turismo 4 alone sold 520,000 units. It was the number one software title not just for the month of March, but for the entire first quarter of 2005.
Industry analysts had been predicting March sales to rise just 5% to 15%, proving (a) an analyst's guess is as good as yours or mine and (b) sales are simply a lot damned hotter than even the guys that are paid to monitor them thought they would be.
Analyses of the report agree that the numbers are surprising given that game sales are frequently depressed during so-called "transition years" or years in which new consoles are launched and old consoles lose marketing support.
The top 5 console titles were: (1) Gran Turismo 4 (2) EA Sports Fight Night Round 2 (3) Devil May Cry 3 (4) Star Wars: Republic Commando (5) God of War.
The top 5 PSP launch titles were: (1) Twisted Metal: Head-On (2) Need For Speed Underground: Rivals (3) Untold Legends: Brotherhood Of The Blade (4) Metal Gear Acid (5) WipEout Pure.

[Sources for this post: Reuters, Gamedaily, IGN.com, 1up]

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Steven Grant @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

hurray for psp! im glad it did well.

GamerFr3ak @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

620,000 sales for PSP is damn good. Must save up money to buy PSP(yea, gonna go with the first generation....just cant wait) adn also both the upcoming Sony and MS Super-consoles.

I bet theres many more ppl like me waiting for the next iteration of PSP, so sales will only go up.
Hurray for PSP!!!

Eric Pobirs @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

If you consider the difference in installed base, those Xbox sales reflect a remarkable strength this late in the system's life and new generation looming. Those exclusive games like Doom 3 and soon Half-Life 2 that just cannot be made to work on the competing machines without great compromises must be drawing some attention.

Half a million additional PS2s is nothing to sneeze at either but not a significant in terms of growth.

Roger @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

With all the talk, its hard to believe that Lumines was not number 1, and even harder to believe that it was not in the top 5. I also can't believe that with all the trash people have been talking about Untold Legends, its number 3 ahead of Wipeout Pure.

Tony @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

I have to admit I'm surprised at that PSP top 5 list. Twisted Metal is #1? Lumines and Ridge Racer didn't even make the list? Well, that probably proves it's true... top selling games are never the ones they should be.

I DO NOT have anything against Untold Legends or Twisted Metal, just surprising is all.

Vladimir Cole @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

Lumines was number 6... just barely missed the cutoff.

heath @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

Untold Legends is an ok console Diablo knockoff and the only rpg of the launch titles. That's why I bought it, and probably many other people.

Vladimir Cole @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

#7 Tony Hawk's Underground 2 Remix
#8 Ridge Racer
#9 Ape Escape: On The Loose
#10 NBA

Joey Geraci @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

You guys gotta consider, of those 620,000 units, at least 10% of those have to be repeat units when a customer took back his defective psp. Maybe even more, as many of the people with defective units had to try several times before they got a unit that wasn't defective. It still probably beat the ds, but certainly by a smaller number.

ill trooper @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

Joey, it appears this is saying the DS sales numbers are for 2005 alone, not including the 2004 launch sales, so the PSP hasn't really touched it yet.

Over half a mil sales for the PSP is great though!

TrackZero @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

Way to go! Compare a system that came out this years sales versus one that came out last year! Fair way to compare!

Lame.

(Note: This is not an invitation to start in with sales statistics, the point is it's a lame thing to do either way and completely unnecessary.)

Koontz @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

Wow, Sony sold a whole lot of underclocked bricks whose top speed is 333MHz. Holy cow, what innovation! Pffft.

Ms. Pacman @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

I didn't know there were 500,000 people in the US that did not have a PS2 console.

Vladimir Cole @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

TrackZero: the point isn't to make the DS look bad. It's just a data point.

Joey: Good point about the defective units. I'm curious what the return rate on the PSPs is.

Chris Norman @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

I imagine that games like Untold Legends and Twisted Metal were so high on the list is because they were included in most of the "bundles with games no one would actually buy on their own".

As for the PS2 sales, they were probably spurred on by the new slimline model (and people potentially buying a second console, either for the looks or to replace a run-down older bulky model), and first-time gamers picking up the console to play GT4 alone.

SetupWeasel @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

Ms. Pacman, there are still PS2s in the wild that cannot play dual-layer games. If you wanted to play GT4 and had one of those PS2s, you had to replace it. I imagine that is part of the PS2 numbers.

Jared @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

Personally, every person I know who bought a PSP had to return it at least once (including myself). It really is ridiculous how poorly these machines were built to have so many defective units.

VAStateOfMind @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

CAVEAT: I already have a DS, and very much like the PSP and plan to get one when the price drops later this year -- they both have their strengths and weaknesses and I believe they can and will co-exist in this market.

I don't know if the poster of this article, Vladimir Cole, used the results of the NPD Group Study VERBATIM, or (as I suspect) used the NPD study IN CONJUNCTION with the sources mentioned at the end of the post to paint a very rosy picture for the PSP while basically leaving the DS -- arguably a HIT as much as or perhaps more than the PSP -- out of this particular picture.

So, #11 -- #10 makes an EXCELLENT and not-at-all-lame point. In this particular scenario, it is completely necessary to take launch sales into account at the birth of a new platform, probably for at least the first year. In fairness, you CANNOT compare total PSP sales vs. total DS sales for 2005 *only* (as Mr. Cole did) without including the Nov-Dec 2004 sales for DS as well! And when you do that -- with all due respect to the PSP zealots who will regardless take exception to my comments -- the DS is comfortably ahead of the PSP in sales. And with a whole lot LESS "return/exchange sales" included in that number too!

Flame on... ;)

SetupWeasel @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

VAStateofMind, the developers know the score, and they are the ones who matter. You can just look at the Japanese numbers to see that the DS will be sucessful. It does seem that a lot of people are going out of their way to report impending Nintendo doom. Fuck them. As long as Nintendo makes money, they will make new systems, and they are making a lot of it right now.

LactoseTheIntolerant @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

In reply to #12.
The Playstation 2 is clocked at 300 MHZ. The PSP at 333 MHZ. The Nintendo DS is clocked at 67 MHZ. Underclocked brick? Hardly.

I have nothing against the DS, nor the PSP. They are both unique systems that deliver solid gaming.

If your going to compare how a company that never made handhelds before did on the market, compare Sony to another companys sales on thier first handheld endevour. Lets say Nokia and thier N-gage. It seems kind of pointless to compare a company on thier first handheld system to the company that has dominated that market for years. There have been countless handhelds put on the market and 90% of them fail. The fact that Sony has been able to produce a handheld system that can even compete with anything Nintendo puts out on the handheld market is a miracle.

Sony, I salute you. Your first handheld ever and it's doing well.

TrackZero @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

LactoseTheIntolerant, you're missing out on the reference. The PSP is actually underclocked by Sony on purpose from what it's hardware can do to save on battery life, see here: http://consoul.blogspot.com/

Frood @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

#20... the way you wrote, "Sony, I salute you," makes you sound like you want to marry a PSP. It's a little creepy.

Clint @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

Either way you look at it, in the USA the PSP is the bestselling handheld system. Nintendo isn't number 1 this YEAR. Get the picture Nintendbots?

P.T. Barnum @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

Looks like I was totally right.

There is a sucker born every minute.

I can't believe that many people bought such cruddy games like untold legends. Even the PSP. Sony needs to get their acto together and learn how to make a console that isn't full of dead/stuck piceks and dust before they can expect to sell them.

I went through three units before I returned it completely and got my money back.

I'm sure as hell not going to fund any company that sells such shit.

dlian @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

I bought a PSP and three games: Untold Legends, Lumines and Dynasty Warriors. I have had no problems with my PSP(I love the little thing) and I don't know anybody else who has had problems, either. I like both Untold Legends and Lumines. Dynasty Warriors was just okay. enh. I also see plenty of games coming down the pipeline that I want to purchase.
There are three major console makers right now: Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. Everyone seems to want some kind of a winner. Why? This kind of competition means games go cheaper, faster. It means prices on systems drop quicker. And it means that the makers are working harder on the next-gen consoles. This means that we gamers have plenty of choices for all of our gaming pleasures. I hope that Nintedo, Sony and Microsoft continue fight it out for a long time.

dlian @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

Agent X @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

#15, have you stopped to consider that maybe a lot of people like Untold Legends and Twisted Metal: Head-On? I haven't played either game myself, but some of my friends have one or both of these games and have been raving about them. None of them were forced to buy these games. One of my friends tried Untold Legends before buying it, and bought it because he liked it so much.

#18, you CAN fairly compare total PSP sales vs. total DS sales for 2005. It's a simple statistic. The article is analyzing sales in the United States, and you're looking at the total number of units sold for both systems this year. The PSP in the final eight days of March has handily trounced whatever the DS could amass in the first three months of 2005.

If you really want to have fun with statistics, then let's look at the PSP's tie ratio for software to hardware. Right now, it's sitting pretty at 1.77. That's a far cry better than the DS's tie ratio for its first few weeks on the market, which was something like 0.75 because some owners decided they didn't want to chip in for the poor-quality games that make up the bulk of the DS's tiny library. It's evident that PSP owners are actually BUYING games for their new system, while DS owners aren't. Developers will surely notice this, and thus throw the bulk of their handheld support behind PSP while leaving the DS to twist in the wind.

On that note, I'd love to know what the total SOFTWARE sales were for PSP and DS so far for the year 2005. If PSP software has outsold (not just tie ratio, but in pure quantitative numbers) DS software for this year, then that would really paint a grim picture of the DS market, especially when it went unchallenged for 2 3/4 of those months. Ideally, developers should support both systems if they can, but if a developer or publisher is only able to devote resources to one of them, the smart money is on the PSP.

SetupWeasel @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

Or maybe the TIE ratio for the DS was lower because Nintendo gave you a game with the system and could play previously made GBA games.

Maybe the TIE ratio for the PSP is higher because Sony and certain retailers forced game bundles on their customers. Imagine someone in Canada forced to get the Gretsky bundle wanted a decent game as well. That boosts the average right there, whether or not the customer sold the shitty 989 sports title.

I guess when you make a weak argument you should use the one statistic in your favor.

vj @ Dec 18th 2005 9:06PM

#28 - Actually, if you know how NPD works, SKUs like the Gretzky bundle are counted only as hardware sales, not software sales. NPD tracks each SKU sold and the retail price paid for it - they have no way of separating out a Gretzky game and assigning it a price, so they track the whole package as just hardware. If someone were to guess how many bundled packages were sold and add those games to the tie ratio, it would be higher (and the tie ratio of consoles with popular bundles, like the Gamecube, would be higher too.)