Another Strong Month For Video Game Sales (NTDOY, MSFT, ERTS, TTWO)

NPD has its data out for the month of August showing another massive month in video game sales.  Game titles and hardware showed roughly a 46% combined gain over August 2006.

The Nintendo (NASDAQ/PK:NTDOY) Wii still took the lead with over 400,000 consoles selling.  The negative part of this is that this represents a 5% sequential decline from July.  And the other downside is that Wii-nies won’t be playing Halo 3 in less than two weeks like every Xbox 360 owner will be.

The Xbox 360 from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) sold over 276,000 consoles in August after announcing price cuts.  The Xbox 360 crowd is obviously looking forward to this Halo 3 record breaking launch, because even early last month it came out that Halo 3 had pre-sold over 1 million copies of its blockbuster game.

Take-Two Interactive (NASDAQ:TTWO) also won out with its BioShock game title selling 491,000 units.  Shares of TTWO are indicated higher pre-market.  Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:ERTS) Madden NFL 2008 sold 897,000 units.

While the comparables for year over year from 2007 compared to 2006 are strong, you know this is going to set a huge benchmark for 2008 that will be tough to show this same sort of growth.

Jon C. Ogg
September 14, 2007