According to the latest figures from market research firm NPD Group, U.S. videogame industry sales took a dive in August, falling 10 percent year-on-year (YoY).
Overall sales fell to $819 million USD, with software revenue collapsing 14 percent and hardware falling 5 percent.
Almost reaching the point of saturation, the Nintendo Wii saw its lowest sales since November 2006, falling 12 percent to just 244,300 units sold for the month.
The perennial hardware leader, the Nintendo DS line, fell 38 percent to 342,700 units sold. DS sales have now fallen in each month since April.
Dead-in-the-water handheld PSP sales dove 43 percent, with Sony selling just 79,400 units for the month.
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 rose to the top, seeing 66 percent growth thanks to the release of their updated, slimmed down console. Microsoft sold 356,700 units for the month. The Sony PlayStation 3 saw 7.6 percent growth YoY, selling 226,000 units for the month.
Says Anita Frazier, senior analyst for NPD: “This month reflected the lowest sales for August since 2006. While all categories are down in both dollars and units, the portable portion of the industry is down to a greater extent.”
Result for: senior analyst
According to research firm iSuppli, the DRAM market could see a significant supply shortage in the Q3 2010 due to “limited manufacturing equipment availability” and other challenges.
Says the company (via Barrons):
“A commodity profoundly susceptible to the variable dynamics of supply and demand, DRAM is expected to ship 15.9 million 1Gbit-equivalent units in 2010, up 48.6% from 10.7 million units last year.”
“Most of the year’s growth is forecasted to occur in the second half of the year, with each of the final two quarters of 2010 expected to post sequential bit growth of approximately 11%. In comparison, bit growth in the first two quarters of 2010 topped out at far below the 10% mark. Such high levels of growth, concentrated in a six-month period, will strain the production capabilities of DRAM suppliers.”
Mike Howard, senior analyst for DRAM at iSuppli also adds that two major factors should lead the market into a supply shortage, with the first being limited tooling equipment, especially from ASML Holding. The second is the challenges for manufacturers migrating to below 50 nm.
Result for: senior analyst
Microsoft had a pretty big day today at the E3 Expo, unveiling an entirely new control system for its Xbox 360 console among other notable announcements.
Dubbed Natal, the system is a fully hands-free control system which uses facial recognition and multiple motion sensors to allow users to playback games using their body motions and not buttons.
The system is still in early stages, but Microsoft has sent full functioning prototypes to all big game developers.
Showing off the technology, developer Peter Molyneux said the system could recognize facial expressions as well, determining the mood of the player or players and “reacting accordingly.”
Will Natal be successful however? Piers Harding-Rolls, senior analyst with Screen Digest, says it will depending on a number of factors.
“I think the technology looks very interesting but its success depends on the content and how easy it is to use,” Rolls added.
“The other aspect is cost and how they will get it out to the user base. That said, I think Microsoft would like to get it out sooner, rather than later.”
“Sales of the Xbox 360 hit their peak in 2008 and are now in decline, in terms of console sales, so you would expect them to get it out as soon as possible to rekindle interest in the platform.”
Also notably at the show Microsoft announced they had made deals with Twitter and Facebook in an effort to make “full integration between three of the largest social networking sites on the planet.” The third being, of course, Xbox Live.
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