NPD has released the October numbers. They’re quite interesting and the most important in some time. October historically is where the early signs of the holiday uptick in sales begin, and you can actually get a pretty good idea of where total holiday sales will turn out. Historically November sales are roughly 2-5-3 times October’s, and December doubles November, so seeing how each system did last month can give some insight into how they’ll finish out the year as well. READ MORE

September has come and gone and, as usual, halfway through the next month, NPD has released its sales numbers so we can again take our monthly journey trying to figure out what those numbers mean for the industry at large. There weren’t a huge number of surprises in September, but it’s still a worthwhile endeavor to go over the results to learn what we can. READ MORE

NPD has released the monthly numbers for August. The big news on the software side is the release of Madden 09 and its associated gangbuster sales. Meanwhile, hardware sales haven’t deviated much from the recent status quo.

The NPD retail month of August is a 4 week month that started on Sunday, August 3rd and ended on Saturday, August 30. Since August is a 4 week month like most NPD months, but other months are 5 weeks, most comparisons and trends will be drawn using weekly averages instead of the monthly totals. This allows for a more accurate understanding of what’s happening that isn’t broken by different months covering different time spans. We’ll start at the top of the list and work our way down. The first number will be this month’s sales, followed by the weekly average in parenthesis, then last month’s sales with the weekly average, and finally August 2007’s sales and weekly average. READ MORE

NPD has released the monthly numbers for July 2008. Unlike last month, there aren’t any major market shifts or milestones being broken here, but there is still a lot of information that can be found in the current numbers, so let’s see what we can learn.

The NPD retail month of July is a 4 week month that started on Sunday, July 6th and ended on Saturday, August 2nd. Since July is a 4 week month like most NPD months, but others, including June, are 5 week months, most of the comparisons and trends will be drawn using weekly averages instead of monthly totals. This allows for a more accurate understanding of what’s happening that isn’t broken by different months covering different time spans. We’ll start at the top of the list and work our way down. The first number will be this month’s sales, followed by the weekly average in parentheses, then last month’s sales with the weekly average, and finally July 2007’s sales and weekly average. READ MORE