GameStop's 2013 holiday sales up 9.3% despite lower game sales

GameStop tallied $3.15 billion in global sales during the 2013 holiday season, a 9.3 percent increase over 2012, the video game retailer announced today.

The company defines last year's holiday season as the nine-week period ending Jan. 4, 2014.

Worldwide comparable store sales jumped by 10.2 percent year-over-year — they were up 7.1 percent in the U.S. and 17.4 percent internationally. According to GameStop, the increase was led by sales of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles, which drove a 99.8 percent jump in new hardware sales.

PS4 and Xbox One games also sold well, but that was offset by a decline in PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 sales that turned out to be more significant than GameStop was expecting; in all, the company saw a 22.5 percent drop in sales of new games compared to 2012's holiday season.

"New software sales came in below our expectations," said Rob Lloyd, GameStop's chief financial officer, in an investor release today. "Based on these results, GameStop now expects its fourth quarter and full year 2013 same store sales to be at the high end of the current guidance range."

GameStop's fourth-quarter guidance, announced in November alongside the retailer's third-quarter earnings report, provided for an increase in comparable store sales of between 2 percent and 9 percent. The company's fourth fiscal quarter ends Feb. 1.