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Videogame sales up 4%
by Hector Cortez
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Overall U.S. video game sales in August rose 4 percent from August 2002, financial analysts said on Tuesday
Overall U.S. video game sales in August rose 4 percent from August 2002, financial analysts said on Tuesday, driven by the strength of Electronic Arts Inc.'s new "Madden NFL" football game.
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Citing research from market service NPDFunworld, Deutsche Bank Securities analyst Jeetil Patel said "Madden" on the PlayStation 2 generated more sales in the month than the other nine titles in the top 10 combined.
The game sold 1.45 million units on the PS2 and 310,000 units on the Xbox in the month, generating sales of more than $86 million. Sales of Madden for GameCube were negligible. EA had a 38 percent market share in August, on a revenue basis, and has a share of more than 20 percent for the year to date.
Harris Nesbitt Gerard analyst Edward Williams said Sony Corp.'s PS2 sold 291,000 units in August to bring its installed base in the United States to 18.8 million, while Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox sold 144,000 units to rise to 5.8 million and Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s GameCube sold 100,000 units to 4.5 million.
Over the last month, both Sony and Microsoft have introduced bundle packages for the holiday season, including games along with their consoles, though retailers and game publishers had been very public with their hopes that the hardware companies would take price cuts instead.
"PlayStation 2 hardware sales continue to lag behind expectations," Williams said in a note. "We believe that Sony's PlayStation 2 is on a trajectory to sell approximately 8.5 million units this year, down from our initial expectations of 9.5 million units."
Williams also said he expected Nintendo to introduce their own bundle or price cut by the end of September to boost sales. |
