NPD year-end 2009: Industry totals $20.2 billion, declines 8% YoY

News by Stephany Nunneley-Jackson News Editor

Published on Jan. 15, 2010

NPD issued its US games industry figures for December 2009 tonight, and along with the monthly report, it also revealed overall sales for the year in full.

Sales of videogames fell to $20.2 billion which was an 8 percent decline over 2008, with sales of $21.4 billion with non-PC accessory, hardware, and software sales coming in at $19.66 billion for the year.

PC game sales for December came in at $538 million, which was down 23 percent, and $5.53 billion total for the console industry which was up 4 percent. Software total were down 7 percent overall to $2.58 billion, with hardware gaining 16 percent and coming in at $2.19 billion for the year.

December was a great month for Nintendo, though, as Wii sold 3.8 million units, setting a monthly record for console sold, followed closely by DS with 3.31 million giving it a grand total of 11 million units sold in 2009.

Nintendo was also the clear winner in software sales, with six of the top 10 games being for Nintendo platforms.

PS3 moves 1.36M for the month, followed by Xbox 360 pushing through 1.31 million units. PSP sold 654.7K units and the PS2 sold 333.2K.

"There are a lot of hardware records this month," said NPD's Anita Frazier. "The PS3 realized its biggest month of sales ever (1.36 million sold), and the first time sales have exceeded 1 million units. The Wii and the DS also had their biggest sales months ever, and in fact the two platforms hold the top two spots in sales of any hardware device in a single month.

"The video game industry experienced its biggest sales month ever, besting last December by 4 percent. It wasn't enough, though, to compensate for the sales decline throughout the year, and so full-year sales came in 8 percent below last year's record-setting revenues.

"The only category to see an increase over last year was portable hardware, which was up due to a 7 percent increase in the average retail price. The DS platform, across all categories, contributed 17 percent of total industry dollars in 2009, up three points from 2008.

"Unit sales were down only 6 percent from last year. Average retail prices were down in all categories except for portable hardware and accessories, which led to the greater dollar sales decline."

"December marks just the fourth month of the year where the industry saw an increase over last year. January and February were both up, and since the decline that began in March, only September experienced growth.

"The big sales this month, particularly on the hardware front, is a positive move for the industry headed into what will hopefully be a recovery year in 2010."

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 had a great year on the software front, and became the fourth best-selling game of all time with three of the 10 games of all time being Call of Duty games.

The 360 version sold more than 5.8 million copies total so far, and during the month of December, the title sold 2.8 million units on PS3.

Top PC game titles for 2009: