Super Street Fighter IV Debuts In Top Ten As Software Sales Slump

The NPD group’s report on April 2010’s software sales indicates that overall software revenue dropped by 22% compared to April ’09. A sharp drop-off in sales is considered the primary reason for the decline. Amidst the depressing statistics, however, was Super Street Fighter IV on the PS3, which debuted at #10 on the NPD chart, despite its late April 27th release. More on the game after the chart.

NPD note that new releases in March 2010 dropped off by 75% in April. In comparison, March 2009’s releases only dropped off by 54% the following month. Part of the reason for this is that the Easter buying season happened to take place in March this year — as opposed to April , like last — which may have helped March sales, but didn’t facilitate continuing healthy sales of games released that month.

Additionally, they point out that “casual” games only comprised 24% of software revenue in April 2010 as compared to 36% during the same period last year. NPD believe that this is an indication that “more core content shored up better than did some of the more casual or non-traditional content.”

The top-ten software sales chart for April 2010 is as follows:

At the very least, Capcom are bound to be happy. To put things in perspective, Super Street Fighter IV on the Xbox 360 sold 108,000 units by itself and wasn’t in the top-ten. It should be interesting to see how the game holds up going forward.