Videogame sales performance rebounds in September

by Stevie Smith - Oct 20 2009, 15:15

After experiencing something of a performance dip in recent months, the videogame industry appears to be regaining a degree of its recession-dodging momentum, following the release of the latest U.S. market figures by number-crunching specialist NPD Group.

More pointedly, NPD’s figures show that six months of gradual bleed-out were staunched in September, with the industry benefiting from a 1 percent year-on-year boost across the combined gaming hardware, software and accessory markets.

While total year-to-year sales remain down by 13 percent and hardware sales have dropped some six percent to $472.3 million USD, software sales improved by five percent to $649.32 million USD and the single percent jump in September has left the industry with a take of $1.28 billion USD.

The industry upturn was also notable as it saw Sony Computer Entertainment’s powerhouse PlayStation 3 (PS3) outselling both the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360 for the very first time since the console was launched in 2006.

The sudden increase in Sony’s performance comes after the company not only dropped the price of its PlayStation 3 console by $100 USD, but also applied the price cut to its newly launched svelte and streamlined PS3 Slim platform.

Despite Sony’s welcome upsurge, the PlayStation 3 and its unit sales of 491,000 were unable to topple the performance of Nintendo’s market-leading DS handheld console, while led the month with 524,000 unit sales.

Nintendo’s motion-sensing Wii home console rounded out the top three with 462,000 unit sales, while the Xbox 360 secured fourth with 352,600 unit sales.

Want regular updates from The Tech Herald? Follow us on Twitter.

Interested in a more interactive TTH? Join our Facebook Group.

Around the Web