Videogame film tie-in sales declined this year, says NPD

Sales data released from the NPD Group shows that videogames with film tie-ins saw a dramatic sales decrease this year in the US.

According to an article in the L.A. Times, the downward slope for the top franchises for the year had varying factors leading to underwhelming retail performance.

• Activision and DreamWork's Monsters vs. Aliens has sold just 161,000 units since March 2.

• The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, while critically acclaimed, sold around 100,000 units and the less than stellar performance can be blamed being bounced around during the Activision Vivendi merger.

• Disney's Hannah Montana: The Movie sold just 65,000 units during it's first three weeks. The article notes that "inexpensive video games aimed at girls, traditionally the foundation of Disney Interactive's strategy, aren't consistently hits."

• Grin's Wanted: Weapons of Fate has sold only 100,000 units since its launch on March 24 and NPD says that delaying the game for quality reasons, putting it being released much later than the film, had loads to do with the poor sales.

• The Godfather II has sold 241,000 units with the Xbox 360 version taking the fifth spot on the April top ten, but compared to the original game selling 4 million units worldwide, the figures are undesirable.

NPD says that movie tie-ins  have always been a reliable form of sales for publishers, and while Europe has also seen a decline in the sales for the niche, the firm's unsure if this is a trend or just current market fluctuations.

Thanks, GI.biz.