Weak April sales bring potential price cuts, lawsuits
Last Thursday brought more bad news to the gaming industry, as the official NPD Group sales figures for April saw the sector decline for the second consecutive month.
As predicted, U.S. video game sales tumbled 17 percent in April, from $1.24 billion last year to $1.03 billion.
Led primarily by flaccid software sales, which saw a 23 percent year-over-year drop, this second straight month of contraction has pushed the total for domestic sales down 4 percent for the year.
Hardware also suffered, as an 8 percent decrease in sales brought in only $391.63 million for the month.
One bright spot was that while on the whole hardware sales continue to dip, Nintendo's handheld DS was able to double its output from the previous month by selling more than 1.04 million units.
Excitement for this device was driven by the launch of the new DSi. This third iteration of the portable system boasts a larger screen and two internal cameras among its many upgraded features.
Nintendo also continued its dominance of the market with the sale of more than 340,000 Wii consoles. But in spite of selling nearly double the amount of units as its closest competitor, April's numbers reflect an almost 50 percent fall in sales from the previous month.
Nevertheless, the Kyoto-based company still managed to claim the top four spots in software sales as well, due to the strong demand for the company's "Wii Fit."
Sales of this title soared past 471 units, while "Pokemon Platinum," "Mario Kart" and "Wii Play" accounted for another 813 pieces collectively.
One of the more interesting takeaways from NPD Group's latest report is that sales of Sony's aging Playstation 2 continue to thrive.
For last month, sales of Sony's older system outpaced the newer PS3 by nearly 50,000 units. This has led to speculation that the electronics giant may finally announce the long-awaited reduction on its new system during the upcoming Electronics Entertainment Expo being held in Los Angeles.
Should these estimates hold, Sony is expected to cut the cost of the PS3 by $100. However, with a recent report that the company has finally managed to wrangle production costs on each unit sold to be within 10 percent of sale price, a price cut may be unlikely.
In other news, Take-Two Interactive, parent company of Rockstar San Diego, is reportedly pursuing legal action against the now-defunct developers of "Duke Nukem Forever."
According to the suit, Take-Two charges that Apogee Software Ltd., doing business as 3D Realms, "continually delayed the completion date for the 'Duke Nukem Forever,'" and that, "Apogee repeatedly assured Take-Two and the video-gaming community that it was diligently working toward competing development of the PC version of the 'Duke Nukem Forever.'"
Take-Two said that it had initially paid 3D Realms $12 million for the rights to publish the game in 2000 and that in 2007 another agreement had been struck between the two companies.
No dollar amount was disclosed for this second deal.
