After a surprisingly strong April, 
the video-game industry crashed and burned in May.
Software sales, the most closely tracked number by investors, were off 19 percent according to the NPD Group, the industry’s worst monthly performance since October 2006.
No one expected May to be a particularly 
stellar month for video game sales – but no one expected it to be a disaster either. Unfortunately, disaster doesn’t begin to describe the month.
Software sales nose dived 19 percent in May, the industry’s worst performance since Oct. 2006. Overall, brick and mortar sales were down 13 percent to $718.8 million. Year to date, the industry is 14 percent off of 2010’s retail sales pace, according to The NPD Group.
After spending a week looking into the 
future, the video game industry must once more face the reality of the present.
May sales figures are expected to be announced after the market closes Monday – and they’re not likely to add any sort of boost to the goodwill that often accompanies the E3 trade show. Analysts expect sales, at best, to be flat compared to last year.
The Easter Bunny apparently stuffed a 
few baskets with video games this year. The late holiday and a strong slate of titles overcame gloomy headlines of data theft to boost April video game sales by 26 percent, according to the NPD Group.
Hardware sales were also impressive, climbing 12 percent overall, though Microsoft and Sony had a lot more to celebrate than Nintendo did.
Sony’s network woes may have dominated 
headlines in April, but they didn’t do much to hurt overall sales in the video game industry.
Software sales, the most closely tracked data, climbed 26 percent to $503 million, according to The NPD Group, which tracks video game sales. (Analysts had expected a 15 percent increase.) This is the first month software sales have posted a year-over-year increase since November and only the third time they have done so in the past year.
For only the third time in the past year, retail 
game sales saw a year-over-year increase in April. And what a rise it was.
The NPD Group reports that software sales were up 26 percent last month to $503 million. Overall (including hardware and peripheral totals), the industry had brick and mortar sales of $930.7 million – a 20 percent increase.
While April was an awful month for Sony, 
the Easter Bunny may have brought some good news for the video game industry as a whole.
The NPD Group will report monthly sales figures after the market closes Thursday and analysts expect sales to rebound solidly, with software sales (the industry’s most closely tracked number) poised to increase by up to 15 percent over April 2010.
The launch of the 3DS 
was a certifiable hit — but not a grand slam.
According to data released by sales tracking group NPD, the first-week sales of Nintendo’s new handheld system beat out the first-week sales of its predecessor, the DS, thanks to a price tag that was $100 higher. Unfortunately, that price tag also might have kept some from buying it: just under 400,000 3DS units were sold in its first week, about 100,000 units short of the original DS when it launched in November of 2004.
While Nintendo had a lot to brag about in 
March, the overall video game industry wasn’t so fortunate.
Initial sales of the 3DS handheld gaming device beat those of its predecessor, and the powerful Pokemon franchise set new sales records for the company. Despite these achievements, overall retail software sales fell 16 percent last month and revenues on the whole were down 4 percent, according to The NPD Group, which gathers sales data for the industry.
The good news is Nintendo has a hit with the 3DS. The bad news is … well, pretty much everything else.
Despite a strong launch for the handheld device, retail software sales were off 16 percent in March, according to The NPD Group, which gathers sales data for the industry. That’s a lot more than analysts were expecting to see. (The general consensus on Wall Street was a decline of between 8-10 percent.)
Chris Morris: Journalist 