There was no escaping the consumer spending lull of 2010 for the video game industry. Game publishers, accessory makers, and console manufacturers all were burned at the end of the year.
While there were big successes — more than 8 million copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops sold in a single day — but during the holiday period, the most crucial time for the games industry, sales were down 9%. All told, the video game industry walked out of 2010 with retail sales down 5%.
But the year wasn’t a wash for everyone, as a look at research firm NPD’s list of the top 10 selling video games of 2010 shows.
Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI) did take the No. 1 spot thanks to Black Ops, but it did only have one other game on the top 10 with a 2009 release, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, coming in at No. 8.
Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:ERTS) took the No. 2 spot with perennial favorite Madden NFL 2011. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) wasn’t able to place a game related to its successful Kinect hands-free motion control device, but it snagged the No. 3 spot with Reach, the most recent iteration of its Halo franchise juggernaut.
Nintendo (PINK:NTDOY) took the No. 4 and No. 6 spots with New Super Mario Bros. Wii and the fitness game Wii Fit Plus, respectively. Take-Two (NASDAQ: TTWO) shareholders continue to reap the benefits of the game developed by Rockstar Games (creators of Grand Theft Auto), Red Dead Redemption, which wound up at No. 5. NBA 2K11, another hit for Take-Two, took the No. 10 spot.
French publisher Ubisoft took the two other spots on the list with the Wii exclusive Just Dance 2 and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood coming in at 7 and 9, respectively.
What does it all mean? First, is that Activision’s full-year revenue will be much better than the top 10 list implies because downloadable game and PC sales are excluded. Strong sales of both World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and Starcraft II should translate to stellar revenue reports in March.
For Nintendo, having two games on the charts that came out in 2009 is troubling. Flat hardware sales and no new Wii games in the top 10 imply that the company needs a new machine to bolster its home gaming market pronto.
Of the companies with top 10 games, Electronic Arts is the only one that seems to be in serious trouble with only one title. Its new focus on mobile and social gaming may keep it alive, but it won’t help them recapture the insane profits of 2007. The absence on the list of a Kinect-related game should be mildly concerning to Microsoft — can hardware sales stay up without a killer game? (In fairness, Kinect Adventures, the game that is packaged with each Kinect, has moved enough copies to make this list, although it likely wouldn’t have sold that well were it not bundled with the device.)
Finally, Take-Two is a steady ship, and shareholders look to be in for a strong year again with the Rockstar-developed L.A. Noire due out in the first half of this year.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
