The March 2016 NPD sales results are in, and overall there isn’t a lot of new movement compared to the previous year. March 2016 generated $964.1 million worth of sales in the United States, compared to the $968.4 million from last year. It’s a slight decrease, but nothing major.
As you’d probably expect this far into the cycle, people are more interested in buying software and accessories than consoles. While hardware has gone down by 19% since last year, retail game sales have gone up 8%. Below is a list of the top selling software for the month.
Software:
- Tom Clancy’s The Division (PS4, Xbox One, PC)
- Far Cry: Primal (PS4, Xbox One, PC)
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD (Wii U)
- Grand Theft Auto V (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3, PC)
- UFC 2 (PS4, Xbox One)
- MLB The Show 16 (PS4, PS3)
- Pokken Tournament (Wii U)
- NBA 2K16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PSe)
- Call of Duty: Black Ops III (Xbox One, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)
- Minecraft (360, PS4, Xbox One, PS3)
Interestingly, Tom Clancy’s The Division comes out on top. According to NPD analyst Liam Callahan, the game marks the best launch month for any Tom Clancy game to date, selling 40% more than the next best-selling title, Rainbow Six: Vegas 2.
Between the strong results of The Division and Far Cry: Primal, Ubisoft sits on top as the number one publisher for the first quarter of 2016. They saw a unit sales increase of around 130%, with a dollar sales increase of over 200%.
As for portables, it’s not looking good. Unit sales and revenue were down 19% and 16% respectively, compared to last year. That’s probably no big deal for Sony, however, as the PlayStation 4 was the #1 platform for software sales. Nintendo meanwhile had Zelda and Pokken Tournament to fall back on as number 3 and 4 by SKU respectively.
Of course, there are a number of sports games still doing good as well. NBA 2K16 continues strong sales, remaining at #8. Newcomers UFC 2 and MLB The Show 16 enter at #5 and #6 respectively.
Hardware:
PS4: #1 platform
The PlayStation 4 takes the top spot for hardware sales this year, with portable sales achieving the highest decline in hardware sales compared to last March, followed by current-gen consoles. Seventh generation consoles also had a steep decline of 78%, but it’s worth noting that those numbers are only 2% of the total sales for the month.