Game sales drop 20% in US for August

The NPD Group has sent its August retail sales report for the US market, and once again it was not a pretty sight, as total industry sales dropped 20 percent to $515.6 million. Total software sales (including PC retail software) dropped 11 percent to $252.8 million while hardware sales declined a sizable 39 percent to $150.6 million. Accessories were also down seven percent to $127.3 million.

"The current hardware systems are showing their age, so it goes without saying that it would be great to have new systems breathe life into traditional retail industry sales," said NPD industry analyst Anita Frazier. "I am anxious to learn more about the Wii U launch later this month. And with any luck we will hear news about other systems on the horizon."

While software sales weren't good, Frazier noted some encouraging news about the market starting to stabilize.

"Within software, the high definition platforms posted only a slight 1 percent decline in dollar sales as compared to last August, pointing to a stabilization in that portion of the retail market for games content," she said.

"One factor contributing to the softness we have seen in retail content sales so far in 2012 has been the decline in the sheer number of new titles. This, however, was not the case in August because there were more new titles when compared to last year; titles with sales that were significantly better than last year's launches. So, what we're seeing impact August results is the domino effect of the light release schedule from earlier in the year. That lack of new releases has had a significant impact on subsequent month's sales," she continued.

As NPD now does every month, the firm reminded us that this report is only one piece of the total games industry revenue pie.

"These sales figures represent new physical retail sales of hardware, software and accessories, which account for roughly 50% of the total consumer spend on games," Frazier noted.

"When you consider our preliminary estimate for other physical format sales in August such as used and rentals at $104MM, and our estimate for digital format sales including full game and add-on content downloads including microtransactions, subscriptions, mobile apps and the consumer spend on social network games at $391MM, we would estimate the total consumer spend in August to be $989MM. Our final assessment of the consumer spend in these areas outside of new physical retail sales will be reported in November in our Q3 Games Market Dynamics: U.S. report."

Here's the top 10 games chart for the month, which shows THQ's Darksiders II taking the top spot: