NPD: Xbox 360 Leads Even Despite Low Sales

Xbox 360 took the lead in July 2011 even if they have a low game sales.

A new NPD data has given the Xbox 360 the lead in a market that was the worst since October 2006. Microsoft’s console moved 277,000 units in July, a half of what it managed back in June. However, it was still enough to beat the sales of its competitor like Sony’s PS3 and Nintendo’s Wii.

Microsoft said that while NPD didn’t have a hard data for the other consoles, the lead was going to the greatest year in the Xbox’s 10-year history.The Xbox 360 was helped greatly by the Kinect, and the relative freshness of the slim Xbox 360 design that was released a year ago. On the other hand, the sudden drop in the console’s sales just revealed its poorer game sales. The total sales was down to 26% and saw just eight games got more than 100,000. A year ago, 19 games had broken the same milestone.

Anita Frazier, a researcher from NPD cited that there were substantially fewer new games that can attract buyers, and those games should have broken out just like Ocarina of Time 3D for the Nintendo 3DS.

Microsoft isn’t planning to create dramatic changes beyond the special edition Xbox 360s that are now included forthe holidays. However Nintendo has been moving to increase their sales. Nintendo had just cut the 3DS price into $170. The said firm is also expected to bring a red 3DS that was once only available in Japan.

The performance of the said console was low. It had only matched sales in October 2006, the time where its tough competitor – the PS3 and Wii – hadn’t arrive in the US market yet, and many gamers were deliberately holding off on buying games and new systems.