NPD: Retail sales down, Xbox One outsells PS4

Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare was November's biggest seller on the NPD charts but it's Microsoft that's really celebrating. According to NPD figures its Xbox One outsold PlayStation 4 last month.
"November set a new record for sales of Xbox One, and Xbox One was the best-selling console in the US and UK. Response to the holiday lineup of games on Xbox One was incredible, with Xbox One fans buying more games in November in the U.S. than any other gen eight platform and enjoying over 357 million hours of gameplay globally," Xbox Marketing's corporate VP Mike Nichols said in a statement to media.
"In fact, more fans logged into Xbox Live across Xbox One and Xbox 360, and enjoyed more entertainment, than any other month in the history of Xbox. We love to see the excitement from our fans and are grateful for their passion, support and contributions to the Xbox community."
While the Xbox team is no doubt doing a victory dance, sales across all categories were actually down more than ten per cent compared to the same period last year.
"Overall retail sales across hardware, software, and accessories declined 11 per cent this November versus November 2013," said The NPD Group's Liam Callahan.
"For the most part throughout 2014, we have seen software declines that were offset by year-over-year increases in hardware spending. This November, however, hardware declines totaled $294 million while software declined $17 million or 2 per cent.
"Accessory sales increased by a modest $5 million. Currently, year-to-date sales across hardware, software, and accessories through November 2014 are up 2 per cent."
In hardware, bundles played a large part in sales during November with some new bundles ranking as "the highest selling hardware bundles so far this year" and "one bundle ranking as the highest selling hardware bundle ever based on dollar sales."
Combined Xbox One and PlayStation 4 sales were 80 per cent higher in November than the combined sales of their predecessors, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.
"While the majority of the decrease in dollar sales of hardware stemmed from an expected drop of seventh generation console sales, eighth generation sales also decreased and represented 38 per cent of the total declines in hardware sales from November 2013 to November 2014," said Callahan.
"Despite a decline in dollar sales, hardware unit sales for eighth generation consoles increased by 3 percent over November 2013."
In software, the new November launches scored 14 per cent more sales than November 2013's new launches, and the handheld and PC categories got a boost from high profile releases.
"Software declines stemmed from losses from consoles software as portable software and PC Games software increased over November 2013. Portable software increased by 25 per cent due to the combined performance Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, Pokemon Omega Ruby, and Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS. PC game sales increased by 34 per cent over November 2013 due to The Sims 4 and the launch of World of Warcraft expansion, Warlords Of Draenor."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-12-12-npd