Okay, so a 3% uplift in gaming software sales may not sound like something to really celebrate, but after almost eighteen straight months of declining sales it's something the industry is keen to hang on to.
It's not that we've gotten less interest in gaming than we used to be, but with sales of last-gen software inevitably tanking it's taken the rest of the market down with it. And since the latest generation of consoles was released there have been precious few really exciting new titles released to really grab the attention.
Fighty fatality-ridden gore-fest, Mortal Kombat X, had a large part to play in the boost in software sales. NPD analyst, Liam Callahan, has reportedly claimed game launches this April have seen over 50% higher sales than in the same month last year.
We're starting to see this game generation start to find its feet and with E3 2015 on the way in less than a month that's only going to gather pace as the year rolls on.
The numbers in the latest NPD study also makes good reading for the hardware manufacturers too with sales increasing, on a unit basis, by 12%. They make relatively good reading for us consumers too as they also reflect the price cuts we've been seeing on both the latest consoles.
Actual hardware revenue dropped by 4% because of the price drops on the Xbox One and PS4.
One other stat in the report has really stood out for us though, and that's the fact that, compared with the same time in the PS3 and Xbox 360's lives, the cumulative numbers of PS4 and Xbox One consoles out in the wild is 50% higher.
That's pretty astounding given just how popular those last-gen consoles were.
