The July NPD Numbers have been released. For ill informed readers, the NPD Group is the leading independent video game research firm, that monitors and tracks video game hardware and software sales in North America.



Hardware

Software

The NPD Group’s Anita Frazier talks about last month’s numbers:

The U.S. video games industry declined for the fifth consecutive month, bringing year-to-date sales to $8.16 billion, down 14% from the same time period last year.

In order for the industry to come in flat or slightly up for the total year, the back five months of the year have to come in 11% (or more) higher than the last five months of last year.

While year-to-date results are weak, there are some big titles set to be released over the next several months, including Madden this month, which should help spur sales. The worst comps should be behind us, and looking beyond August we have The Beatles: Rock Band, Halo 3: ODST, and of course, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to look forward to.

Hardware sales have slowed considerably on nearly every platform. The Xbox 360 is the only console system showing a unit sales increase year-to-date, while the NDS has the highest sales of all hardware platforms both for the month, and year-to-date.

NCAA Football 10 was the top selling game for the month, with combined sales of 689K units across all platforms.

Wii Sports Resort was the top-selling software SKU for the month with 508K units sold with a 2.5% attach rate to the hardware install base.

Of all genres, the music/dance genre has suffered the greatest declines this year, with nearly $390 million less revenues than the same time period last year.