npd group

U.S. retail sales of video game hardware, software and accessories in the important month of November rose 0.4 percent to $3 billion as sales of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" blew up last year's "Call of Duty: Black Ops," according to market researcher NPD Group.

We waited to bring this story to you just in case the stock recovered (or took an even steeper dive) before the end of the trading day.  But U.S. markets are now closed, meaning we can report that Yahoo’s stock fell exactly 5.66 percent today.

In fairness to Yahoo, almost everything with a ticker symbol suffered some damage over the past seven or so hours, as, after making up a lot of ground, the Dow and the Nasdaq still closed down 1.15 percent and 1.25 percent, respectively.  The situations in the Middle East and Japan have made investors of all sorts nervous.

According to a recent survey of Apple iTunes, iPod, iPhone and iPod Touch users, conducted by The NPD Group, more than a quarter of consumers participating had a strong interest in a free cloud-based music option.

Many were willing to pay a subscription fee to access their own music libraries from multiple devices and platforms, when asked about their reactions to various music subscription-model concepts.

(PRESS RELEASE – June 20, 2010) — U.S. small and medium businesses (SMB) are more likely to spend money on PCs this year than on any other major IT hardware category, according to leading market research company The NPD Group’s SMB Technology Report.

The sharp decline in U.S. video game sales the NPD Group reported Thursday were not surprising, and analysts widely expect sales to pick up in November.

Today Dynamite Records, a fixture in Northampton, MA for more than 27 years shut its doors. Probably doesn't matter to most of my readers, but consider this news against the backdrop of figures released this week by the NPD Group indicating that iTunes controls 25 percent of all US music sales in the US.

What's more, they control 69 percent of all online music sales. Meanwhile, the news gets worse for the likes of Dynamite Records because the brick and mortar stores that sold the most CDs?

WalMart and Best Buy. CDs Still Dominate...For Now Yet surprisingly, in spite of the bitching and...

U.S. video game sales of hardware, software and accessories declined 31 percent in June to $1.17 billion, according to the NPD Group.

The year-over-year decline was the sharpest since a 41 percent drop in September 2000.

"This is one of the first months where I think the impact of the economy is clearly reflected in the sales number, said Anita Frazier, NPD Analyst.

U.S. video game sales fell by 23 percent in May from a year ago, dipping below the one billion dollar mark for the first time since August 2007, the NPD Group said in its new report.

Sales of videogame hardware, software and accessories dropped to $863.3 million in May from $1.2 billion in May of 2008.

Hardware sales declined 30 percent to $302.5 million and software sales were off 17 percent to $448.9 million.

Sales of accessories were 25 percent less at $112 million.

U.S. video game sales declined 17 percent in March to $1.43 billion, compared to $1.72 billion in March 0f 2008, according to The NPD Group.