April NPD: hardware sales rising, no bestselling software

by Andrew Yoon { May 15th 2008 at 10:00PM }

PSP hardware continues to sell incredibly well, outpacing both the PS3 and Xbox 360 on a monthly basis. April's NPD figures have come in, and PSP sold 192,696 units last month. That's an increase of 5.6% from April 2007, although a significant plummet from March 2008. Considering the lack of high-profile new releases, a drop in hardware makes a lot of sense.

Software sales were at a million units for the month, a respectable figure. However, God of War and Crisis Core quickly dropped out of the bestsellers list, after a brief appearance last month. These two titles are unsurprisingly the top sellers on the PSP platform this month.

Check out the numbers, after the break.

- Wii: 714.2K

6.8K (0.94%)
- DS: 414.8K

283.2K (40.6%)
- PSP: 192.7K

104.3K (35.1%)
- Xbox 360: 188K

74K (28.2%)
- PS3: 187.1K

69.9K (27.2%)
- PS2: 124.4K

91.6K (42.4%)

April Software

1. GTA IV – Xbox 360 – 1.85 million*
2. Mario Kart Wii – Wii – 1.12 million
3. GTA IV – PS3 – 1.00 million*
4. Wii Play w/ remote – Wii – 360K
5. Super Smash Bros. Brawl – Wii – 326K
6. Gran Turismo 5: Prologue – PS3 – 224K
7. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness – DS – 202K
8. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time – DS – 202K
9. Guitar Hero III – Wii – 152K
10. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – Xbox 360 – 141K*

* includes bundles, collector's editions, GOTY editions

Tags: npd, psp, sales

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

sergioalb64 @ May 16th 2008 12:50AM

I'm glad to say that I helped towards this; I bought a PSP on April 3rd this year, a day before my 21st B-day :)

Alien @ May 16th 2008 9:44AM

Great :) At least hardware is doing great and software is selling to a 5:1 ratio :D

Eric E @ May 16th 2008 1:05PM

Maybe its because (like me) people are waiting for the GoW psp Bundle to buy. Explains both drops.
Better be June 3rd like Amazon says, and not End of June like Buy.com says.....

Lars @ May 16th 2008 2:59PM

It's not really surprising that PSP software isn't topping the charts. With really wide selection of great games to choose from, no two people will buy the same handful of games.

Plus it's a portable, so I'm sure there's a lot of people like me who use it only occasionally for gaming, like for road trips and such. I use it all the time for RSS and whatnot though.

kameko @ May 16th 2008 6:55PM

i just bought my psp a few weeks ago due to the obvious titles like FF: Crisis Core and GoW.

honestly i was pretty disappointed with Crisis Core in general (i know this was for a portable system but those little, short, bland missions where all the scenery is absolutely piss poor just didn't do it for me).

anyway i'm kind of surprised as to how bad psp software sales are? i really doubt its the lack of a-list software titles when huge numbers like Crisis Core and GoW slip off the sales radar within a SINGLE month.

i know a lot of people think its due to pirating but nintendo DS games are WAY easier to pirate and they don't seem to be suffering as much at all.

i'll be honest and say my psp is definitely running custom firmware and i play more games via emulators then actual psp games. so far i've found Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap for GBA (emulated on my psp) to be WAY more fun and captivating then ANY psp game i've tried so far. thats kind of sad really.