Video Games sales in U.S. (retail & digital) - June 2016

Annual and Year to Date

Video game software dollar sales increased by 3 percent in 2015 when including digital full-game sales from participating publishers, while physical-only sales decreased 2 percent.

Year-to-date through June 2016, physical software sales are down 8 percent. Including the full-game download sales for participating publishers, video game software sales decreased only 1 percent.

When including digital full-game sales, games like Grand Theft Auto V, Star Wars Battlefront 2015, and Battlefield Hardline increased in ranking within the top 10 games compared to a physical-only list for 2015. Call of Duty : Black Ops III remained the top game for 2015.

For YTD ranking, Tom Clancy's The Division, Overwatch, and Grand Theft Auto V were the top three games when including digital full-game sales.

June 2016 Overall

Poor comparisons to last June, where software and hardware sales were bolstered by strong launches like Batman : Arkham Knight, led to a sharp 26 percent year-over-year decline in overall spending across software, hardware and accessories. Hardware's drop in sales represented 58 percent of the overall decline in dollar volume compared to last June.

NPD Group's U.S. Games Industry Sales - June 2016
5-week month ; Reporting Period 05/29/16 through 07/02/16

Hardware

Declines in average prices by 15 percent, coupled with a 32 percent decline in units resulted in hardware spending totaling $181MM, a 42 percent decrease versus last June. Eighth-generation hardware, the primary driver of this decrease, saw sales decline 43 percent, or $117MM.

Eighth-generation hardware represented 87 percent of overall hardware spending with a slight loss of share of 1 percentage point as portable hardware represented 11 percent of hardware sales, up 3 percentage points.

After 32 months since the launches of the PS4 and Xbox One, the combined cumulative hardware sales for these two consoles exceed the sales of their predecessors by 40 percent at the same point in their lifecycles.

Software

Both video game software and PC Games software (including digital sales from our participating publishers) declined 20 percent from June 2015.

Poor comps for new launches were a major reason for the software sales decline seen this June. June 2016 launches decreased 67 percent, translating to 1.8MM fewer units, and nearly $114MM fewer dollars.

Specifically, the top new launch of June 2015 was Batman : Arkham Knight, which sold over 5 times the amount of unit and dollar sales generated by the top June 2016 new launch, Lego Star Wars : The Force Awakens.

Month 2 for May launches fared better, however, supported by games like Overwatch and Uncharted 4 : A Thief's End. May 2016 launches sold 84 percent more in June compared to May 2015 launches last June, when looking at dollar sales. April launches fared poorly due to a comparison to the performance of April 2015 launches like Mortal Kombat X with a drop of 70 percent in June sales.

Accessories

[Note that going forward, point/currency card sales will be excluded from the accessory category as these cards are being used to purchase digital content, now accounted for in the software totals.]

Accessory spending for June 2016 declined by 6 percent versus June 2015 with growth a 6 percent growth in headphones / headsets helping to offset losses in other accessory types.

Interactive Gaming Toys experienced a decline of 21 percent, but remained the lead accessory type. Gamepad sales were also down a slight 4 percent, despite the 18 percent growth in eighth-generation gamepad sales.

Participating publisher list