We've just received the January video game sales data from The NPD Group, and similar to much of 2009, we're looking at another down month. Total sales came in at $1.17 billion, down 13%, while hardware fell 21% to $353.7 million and software fell 12% to $597.9 million. The only category to see a slight increase was accessories, which rose 2% to $217 million.
In terms of hardware, although PS3 had its best month ever in December, for January it was back to third place for the console. Sony sold just 276.9K units, while Microsoft sold 332.8K Xbox 360 units. The Wii and DS remain in control, selling 465.8K units and 422.2K units, respectively. Rounding out hardware, the PSP sold 100.1K units and the languishing PS2 sold a mere 41.6K units.
Interestingly, the top selling title for the month was not Mass Effect 2, but it was actually a Wii title from November: New Super Mario Bros. Wii. 5 of the top 10 games for January were for the Wii, showing how dominant Nintendo's platform still is. And only one of those was from a third party publisher: Just Dance from Ubisoft. It's also worth noting that THQ's new IP Darksiders sold through just 171.2K copies in the U.S. despite the publisher having announced worldwide shipments of 1.2 million.
Here's the top 10 list from NPD (ranked by unit sales):
4 Comments
February 11, 2010
Not a single Rock Band or Guitar Hero game, wow. Did they fall hard or what? Is it the games - Beatles, Van Halan? Or is the genre a passing fad?
February 11, 2010
Not surprised at all by that actually Robb. The music genre has been way down, and to the extent people bought those titles it was more during the holidays, not January.
February 12, 2010
The Xbox 360 probably got a bit of a boost from the Mass Effect 2 launch. This year will be interesting - Sony and Microsoft will be trading paint the whole time.
February 16, 2010
the fact that mass effect 2 launched i think Jan 25. and made it to number 2 for the whole month is pretty impressive. i didnt care for part 1 but hear good things about the sequel.