March NPD Software Sales Are Down, But Is It Really Shocking?

The March NPD numbers are in and as usual, sales are down compared to 2011, about 25% down, even with big releases like Resident Evil, Mass Effect and Street Fighter filling out the ranks.

NeoGaf has a compilation of most of the numbers so far and while on the hardware front the Xbox 360 comes out on top as the top selling home console in March, it too was still down by 14% from last year.

The software front was looking a little bit different with El33t Online detailing the $585 million dollars raked in during March, which is down from 2011's $875 million during the same sales period. But again, there were hard hitters like Crysis 2, HomeFront, Pokemon and Fight Night. This year, March only really had Mass Effect 3, the typical annual sports titles and Street Fighter X Tekken in the early goings of the month, while the rest were mostly forget-a-ware. As expected, out of the 3.5 million copies shipped for Mass Effect 3 the numbers indicate that it could have easily topped 1.1 million sell-throughs.

Later on in March there was Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, and while it managed to take a top spot on the list it's seen mostly by core gamers as a hold-me-over until Resident Evil 6.

I also don't really need to explain much why Street Fighter X Tekken isn't higher up on the list, but the reason it's there is mostly attributable to die-hard Capcom fans and casual gamers. VG Chartz reports that the game has sold about 280,000 copies in North America. The real test will be to see how well it does in the months moving forward. It's ranking on the chart is neither grand nor poor but again, we'll see how well it does when the April numbers roll out next month and whether word of mouth will have affected its sales.

For the doom-and-gloom naysayers, the numbers aren't that bad considering that there weren't many other big titles outside of Mass Effect, Resident Evil and Street Fighter, and two out of three of those games had a lot of bad press throughout March especially for Capcom and Electronic Arts, which could have potentially affected their total numbers. You can check out the rankings below.

March 2012 Software Sales Chart

•1). Mass Effect 3 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC) - EA - Over 1.14 Million units

•2). Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (Xbox 360, PS3) - Capcom USA - 582 000 units

•3). MLB 12: The Show (PS3, PSV) - SCE

•4). NBA 2K12 (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PSP, PC, PS2) - Take 2 Interactive

•5). SSX 2012 (Xbox 360, PS3) - EA

•6). Street Fighter X Tekken (PS3, Xbox 360) - Capcom USA

•7). Mario Party 9 (Wii) - Nintendo

•8). Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PC) - Activision Blizzard

•9). Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja (Xbox 360, PS3) - Namco Bandai Games

•10). Major League Baseball 2K12 (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, NDS, PSP, PC, PS2) - Take 2 Interactive