US games market falls 10% in March

Hit releases such as BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider were sadly unable to stop another month of annual decline in the US video games market.

Total video games industry sales declined ten per cent year-on-year to $1.9bn, Gamasutra reports. That is of course an improvement on February’s 25 per cent decline.

Digital games sales accounted for $670m of this total.

Fortunately the release of both BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider – both of which enjoyed record launches for their respective IPs – helped the month avoid an even steeper decline.

NPD added that March 2013 saw 20 per cent fewer boxed releases than March 2012 but that dollar value per SKU was around 70 per cent higher.

Hardware suffered the sharpest decline, falling 32 per cent $221.6m. 3DS was the only machine to grow sales year-on-year, creeping up nine per cent

The March US games chart is as follows:

1. Bioshock Infinite (Take-Two)
2. Tomb Raider 2013 (Square Enix)
3. Gears of War: Judgement (Microsoft)
4. God of War: Ascension (Sony)
5. Call of Duty: Black Ops II (Activision)
6. Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon (Nintendo)
7. MLB 13: The Show (PS3, PSV) – Sony
8. NBA 2K13 (Two)
9. The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (Activision)
10. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 (Namco Bandai)