July 2011 NPD Number Crunch: Industry sales plummet 26 percent

NCAA Football 12 scores touchdown in an otherwise dreary month for sales

Analysts had a bad feeling about how the video gaming industry would be doing for this past month of July, and the NPD Group proved them right with its latest monthly sales report card.  According to NPD, overall North American industry sales dropped a whopping 26 percent year-on-year, making July 2011 the worst month to hit the industry since October 2006.

Much of July's woes were attributed to the equally depressing 29 percent year-on-year drop in console hardware sales.  Software sales too were hit with 17 percent decline from the same month last year.  Were we to toss in physical retail PC software sales for a combined total, the year-on-year drop in software sales actually widens to 30 percent.

Indeed, the only new title to grace the NPD's software top ten was EA's NCAA Football 12, which managed to sell 15 percent higher than its predecessor did back in July 2010.  Padding out the rest of the chart are trusty mainstream favorities released over the past year including Call of Duty: Black Ops, Just Dance 2, New Super Mario Bros. for the DS, and Mortal Kombat.  Interestingly, Fallout New Vegas makes its triumphant return to the software top ten.

July 2011 US Games Industry Summary
Total Industry Sales - $707.7 million USD (-26%)
Console Hardware Sales - $223 million USD (-29%)
Console Software Sales - $336.2 million USD (-17%)
Total Software Sales - $356.9 million USD (-30%)
Accessory Sales - $127.8 million USD (-8%)