Xbox 360 Sales Rise, Despite Poor Video Game Sales

By Ryan Fleming July 16, 2010

The June sales figures for the video game industry have been released by the NPD Group, and for the second straight month the sales are down- this time by as much as 6-percent from the same time last year. There is a bright spot though- hardware sales have risen 5-percent, pushed primarily by the release of the new Xbox 360. Accessories are also up 6-percent, driven by the Xbox Live 1600 point card, the top selling accessory of June, for the fourth consecutive month.

According to Business Insider, the Xbox 360 experienced its second largest non-holiday month since September of 2007, when Halo 3 was released. The PS3 also did well, and has increased its hardware sales for 11 consecutive months.

Compared to 2009, the industry is down 9-percent compared to 2009, but the NPD Group’s Anita Frazier is confident that 2010 will still end on a high note.

“Looking at historical seasonality for the industry, total year U.S. revenues (of new physical sales) could come in anywhere between $18 and $21 billion,” Frazier said. “Given the strong slate of content still to come, and the release of the Move and Kinect controllers, which I believe will spark additional interest in gaming, I think we could see the total year new physical retail sales come in at $20B. We’ll also be reporting consumer reported sales of digitally distributed, rental and used games content to provide insight into those non-POS sources of game sales.”

In terms of actual sales figures, the Xbox 360 was the top selling console with 451.7K units sold, the Wii was second with 422.5K consoles sold, and the PS3 sold 304.8K. On the portable side, even with the 3DS looming, the DS killed it with 510.7K units sold, while the PSP sold 121K units.

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Ryan Fleming is the Gaming and Cinema Editor for Digital Trends. He joined the DT staff in 2009 after spending time covering…

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