2011 hasn't looked so good from the retail sales perspective, but finally in April, the U.S. game industry saw a nice year-over-year gain as total sales climbed 20% to $961.2 million. Software sales in particular were very strong, jumping 26% to $503.2 million, while hardware rose 12% to $279.9 million. Accessories were also up 20% to $147.6 million. Interestingly, while PSN's been down, the best-selling accessory item in April was the Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points Game Card.
NPD did note that the reporting period benefited from Easter, but even so, the month was clearly a nice improvement from April 2010. "Easter purchasing occurred in April this year as opposed to March last year. The Easter timing shift could explain about $60 million of the growth, but even accounting for that shift, sales of new physical product realized a notable increase versus last year," explained NPD industry analyst Anita Frazier.
April sales were driven by two key titles: Warner Bros' new Mortal Kombat and Valve's Portal 2. The combination of releases has sometimes been referred to as "Portal Kombat" by gamers. NPD said that Mortal Kombat sold just under 900k for the period.
LucasArts also made a nice showing in the third spot with The Clone Wars Lego title. Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops continues to fare well in fourth place and it's worth noting that Ubisoft is still having dance genre success with two titles in the top 10.
Here's the full top 10 chart from NPD for April:
