March 2010 NPD Data

March 2010 was a very strong month in video game sales, as expected by the market. The Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii performed well beyond expectations, beating predictions by 12% each. This was the first non-holiday month since June '09 in which the Nintendo DS sold more than 700,000 units. PS3 sales came below expectations, but it was still the eighth month of year-over-year increase in sales for the platform. According to NPD, this was the third best holiday month on record.

Final Fantasy XIII opened with the strongest sales ever seen for the franchise, 48% higher than the previous installment in the series.

The following tables compare market expectations on the simExchange and actual results as reported by the NPD Group.

• US Hardware in March 2010

  Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  Nintendo DS	700,800	626,300	11.90%
  Nintendo Wii	557,500	494,800	+12.67%
  Xbox 360	338,400	428,300	-20.99%
  PLAYSTATION 3	313,900	408,100	-23.08%
  PlayStation Portable	119,900	137,600	-12.86%
  PlayStation 2	118,300	--	--
  Total Hardware Units (excludes PS2)	2,030,500	2,095,100	-3.08%

• US Software in March 2010

  Rank	Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  1	God of War III (PS3)	1,100,000	927,500	+18.60%
  2	Pokemon SoulSilver (DS)	1,020,000	--	--
  3	Final Fantasy XIII (PS3)	828,200	795,400	+4.12%
  4	Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Xbox 360)	825,500	955,600	-13.61%
  5	Pokemon HeartGold (DS)	761,200	--	--
  6	Final Fantasy XIII (Xbox 360)	493,900	532,400	-7.23%
  7	New Super Mario Bros (Wii)	457,400	474,300	-3.56%
  8	Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (PS3)	451,200	482,800	-6.55%
  9	Wii Fit Plus w/ Balance Board (Wii)	429,600	--	--
  10	MLB 10: The Show (PS3)	349,200	--	--
  	Total Software Sales	$875.3M	$799.3M	+9.51%
  	Total Tracked Software Units	4,156,200	4,168,000	-0.28%

The market also tracked the sales of BioShock 2 (Xbox 360), Red Steel 2 (Wii), Wii Sports Resort (Wii), and Yakuza 3 (PS3),which did not make the top 10. The Monthly Sales Futures for these games will cash out at 34.92 DKP.

Where do the expected sales numbers come from?

The simExchange is the video game stock market. Gamers and developers sign up on the simExchange for a free trading account. Using fantasy money, players buy virtual stocks in video games they believe are under-predicting sales and short sell stocks they believe are over-predicting sales. This concept is widely known as "the Wisdom of the Crowd" and this system is known as a "prediction market." Sign up and play today.

About the predictions

Predictions on the simExchange should become more accurate over time as (1) the diversity of the pool of traders increases and as (2) more accurate players are rewarded with more virtual currency for their accuracy (thereby enabling them to form more predictions) and less accurate players lose virtual currency (thereby discounting their ability to form more predictions).