Excluding Sept ’09, which was up close to 1 percent, March 2010 represents the first overall revenue increase for the industry outside of the holiday timeframe since Feb 2009. Drilling into the data, we see prices were down 16 percent for console hardware; flat for console software; and up for all other categories. Lower prices exacerbates decline in dollar sales for console hardware, so while unit sales down only 5 percent, dollar sales were down 12 percent due to declining average retail prices (ARP).

In terms of total revenue, March 2010 is the third best non-holiday month on record behind March 2008 and June 2008.

HARDWARE:

Wii experienced its best non-holiday sales month (hardware) since March 2009. Compared to February 2010, on an average sales/week basis, Wii is the only hardware platform to increase sales velocity over February.

Looking at Nintendo DS sales, March 2010 marks the first non-holiday month the platform has broken the 700K mark since June of ’09, and was the top selling platform across consoles and portables for the month.

Sony’s PS3 hardware posted its eighth consecutive month of year-over-year increases. For the first time since its launch in the U.S., the PS3 has four titles in the Top 10, and was also the leader in console software sales.

SOFTWARE:

God of War III (GOW3) bested the introduction of God of War II (GOW2 – 3/07 PS2 launch) by 32 percent.

Thanks in large part to its multi-platform launch on Xbox 360 and PS3, Final Fantasy 13 is the best launch for any item in the franchise. The next closest was Final Fantasy XII, a PS2 exclusive, which launched and sold 896K units in Nov ’06. FFXIII sales in its introduction month were 48 percent greater than that of FFXII .

In its first month of sales in the U.S., Battlefield: Bad Company 2 bested the launch of Battlefield: Bad Company by +170 percent. Even considering that the first was launched later in its introduction month while BC2 enjoyed nearly a full month of sales, the increase is impressive.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is now the second-best-selling game of all time, after Wii Play.

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