Videogame sales dip for third month despite hardware surge
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Videogame sales fell year-over-year in January for a third straight month, as a drop-off in content and accessories revenues couldn't be saved by still-strong hardware sales.
Overall sales dipped narrowly, down 2% from January 2021 to $4.684 billion, according to NPD Group, led lower by videogame content sales that fell 4% to $4.109 billion. Accessory sales fell 15%, to $185 million, and hardware sales (on the continuing power of new-generation consoles from Sony (NYSE:SONY) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)) rose 22% to $390 million.
The sales figures broke a six-month winning streak by declining in November, and then fell again in December (two months covering the critical holiday shopping season).
For January, though, hardware logged its highest sales total since the last generation, in January 2009. And despite some ongoing strength from Nintendo's Switch (OTCPK:NTDOY), the best-selling platform in unit and dollar terms was Sony's PlayStation 5 (SONY), ahead of Microsoft's Xbox Series (MSFT) at No. 2 on both measures.
Microsoft's Xbox Elite Series 2 Wireless Controller kicked off the year as the best-selling accessory.
Turning to games, a new PokÃ©mon entry debuted atop the charts; PokÃ©mon Legends: Arceus (OTCPK:NTDOY) displaced Call of Duty: Vanguard
(NASDAQ:ATVI) as the month's best seller. And the holiday CoD entry finished just ahead of a pair of hard-chargers that benefited from Steam launches in January. Monster Hunter: Rise
(OTCPK:CCOEY) jumped to the No. 3 spot from No. 94, and 2018's God of War (SONY) jumped to No. 5 from No. 146. (The No. 4 entry was Madden NFL 22
(NASDAQ:EA)).
Rounding out the software top 10: No. 6, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales (SONY); No. 7, FIFA 22 (EA); No. 8, Mario Kart 8 (OTCPK:NTDOY); No. 9, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Extraction
(OTCPK:UBSFY); and No. 10, Battlefield 2042 (EA).
Turning to mobile games, after record growth through most of the pandemic, mobile spending fell 6.8% year-over-year in January. (That's actually typical for mobile game spending in January, aside from last year's COVID-19 outlier, analyst Mat Piscatella notes.)
Sensor Tower reports top mobile games by revenue include Candy Crush Saga (ATVI), Roblox
(NYSE:RBLX), Coin Master, Genshin Impact, Garena Free Fire
(NYSE:SE), Evony: The King's Return, Clash of Clans, PokÃ©mon GO (OTCPK:NTDOY), Homescapes and Royal Match.
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