US / UK: sales for the first half of 2015
UK
The first half of 2015 wasn’t pretty good for Nintendo and its consoles: Software sales were down for both the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U (despite the launch of the New Nintendo 3DS in February, along with The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D and Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate). That being said, the drop isn’t catastrophic, though there’s absolutely no way to spin the numbers below into a positive…
The UK has become one of the weakest markets for Nintendo, who has lost quite a lot of steam compared to the Wii / Nintendo DS era. Talking of Wii and Nintendo DS, Software sales are dropping really fast, which is pretty much the same for the other old-gen platforms from Sony and Microsoft.
And during the first half of 2015, Nintendo was only the 7th best publisher, with a total of 772 262 games sold in total. This rather poor performance is of course due to the relative weakness of Nintendo on the UK market, but mainly the fact that the company sells many more games during the second half of the year (especially the holiday period).
Source: GFK Chart-Track
Via: MCV magazine / NeoGAF
United States
In the United States, Nintendo didn’t perform much better compared to the UK… at least, at first glance. The chart below shows the 10 best-selling titles in the United States during the first half of 2015, but it groups together sales of all the versions of multiplatform titles. Therefore, exclusives are under-representend: in fact, there isn’t a single one in the Top 10!
Nintendo only has “two” games in the top 10 below: Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. The NPD doesn’t provide any data, but thanks to the various press releases from Nintendo, we do know that the Nintendo 3DS version has sold significantly better than the Wii U version (which isn’t all that surprising due to the different in userbase).
Software – Top 10 1st Half 2015
1) Mortal Kombat X (Publisher: Warner Bros.)
2) Grand Theft Auto V (Publisher: Take-Two Interactive Software)
3) Battlefield Hardline (Publisher: Electronic Arts)
4) Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (Publisher: Activision)
5) Minecraft (Publisher: Microsoft)
6) Batman: Arkham Knight (Publisher: Warner Bros.)
7) Dying Light (Publisher: Warner Bros.)
8) NBA 2K15 (Publisher: Take-Two Interactive Software)
9) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Publisher: CD Project)
10) Super Smash Bros. (Publisher: Nintendo)
Source: NPD
Via: Fortune
