January 2010 NPD Sales Data

Video game hardware sales in January 2010 were below market expectations. Total hardware units (excluding PS2) sold were just under 1.6 million, 10.5% worse than the market's expectation for nearly 1.8 million units sold. Hardware sales fell 21% compared to last year.

Software sales came in 11% under expectations; however, this was a 12% drop from January 2009.

Xbox 360 was the only console to outperform market expectations with a 27% beat. Highly anticipated new release Mass Effect 2 disappointed with sales 22% below forecast. New Super Mario Bors and Modern Warfare 2 continued their strong performance as expected. New releases Bayonetta, Dark Void, and MAG failed to even chart.

The following tables compare market expectations on the simExchange and actual results as reported by the NPD Group.

• US Hardware in January 2010

  Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  Nintendo Wii	465,800	548,200	-15.03%
  Nintendo DS	442,200	542,700	-22.20%
  Xbox 360	332,800	262,100	+26.97%
  PLAYSTATION 3	276,900	292,900	-5.46%
  PlayStation Portable	100,100	138,700	-27.83%
  PlayStation 2	41,600	--	--
  Total Hardware Units (excludes PS2)	1,597,800	1,784,600	-10.47%

• US Software in January 2010

  Rank	Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  1	New Super Mario Bros (Wii)	656,700	588,400	+11.61%
  2	Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360)	572,100	728,700	-21.49%
  3	Wii Fit Plus	555,700	--	--
  4	Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360)	326,700	318,200	+2.67%
  5	Mario Kart (Wii)	310,900	--	--
  6	Wii Sports Resort (Wii)	297,600	336,900	-11.67%
  7	Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3)	259,000	216,300	+19.74%
  8	Army of Two: The 40th Day (Xbox 360)	246,500	224,300	+9.90%
  9	Just Dance (Wii)	191,900	--	--
  10	Darksiders (Xbox 360)	171,200	241,900	-29.23%
  	Total Software Sales	$597.9M	$671.4M	-10.95%
  	Total Tracked Software Units	2,529,800	2,654,700	-4.70%

The market also tracked the sales of Army of Two: The 40th Day (PS3), Bayonetta (Xbox 360), Bayonetta (PS3), Dark Void (PS3), and MAG (PS3), which did not make the top 10. The Monthly Sales Futures for these games will cash out at 17.12 DKP.

Where do the expected sales numbers come from?

The simExchange is the video game stock market. Gamers and developers sign up on the simExchange for a free trading account. Using fantasy money, players buy virtual stocks in video games they believe are under-predicting sales and short sell stocks they believe are over-predicting sales. This concept is widely known as "the Wisdom of the Crowd" and this system is known as a "prediction market." Sign up and play today.

About the predictions

Predictions on the simExchange should become more accurate over time as (1) the diversity of the pool of traders increases and as (2) more accurate players are rewarded with more virtual currency for their accuracy (thereby enabling them to form more predictions) and less accurate players lose virtual currency (thereby discounting their ability to form more predictions).