With 2009 quickly coming to a close, and NPD recently having released the November sales data, we're getting a pretty good picture of which titles came out on top for the year in the U.S. Today, IndustryGamers received an updated NPD top 10 list for the best selling games year-to-date through the month of November.
Unsurprisingly, Modern Warfare 2 was #1, but it was Nintendo overall that was the biggest winner. Sure, the Wii definitely experienced a slowdown in 2009, but through November six of the top 10 selling games were for Nintendo platforms (five on Wii). Some quick math shows that Nintendo sold 13.5 million units in the top 10, representing more than 58% of games sold on the list.
Here's the top 10 list (ranked by units, at the individual SKU level, and with collectors/bundles rolled up):
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Xbox 360 - Activision Blizzard - 4.2 million
- Wii Fit (w/ balance board) - Wii - Nintendo - 3.5 million
- Wii Sports Resort (w/ MotionPlus) - Wii - Nintendo - 2.4 million
- Wii Mario Kart (w/ wheel) - Wii - Nintendo - 2.2 million
- Wii Play (w/ remote) - Wii - Nintendo - 2.1 million
- Halo 3: ODST - Xbox 360 - Microsoft - 2 million
- Pokemon Platinum Version - DS - Nintendo - 1.9 million
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - PS3 - Activision Blizzard - 1.9 million
- Madden NFL 10 - Xbox 360 - Electronic Arts - 1.5 million
- New Super Mario Bros. Wii - Wii - Nintendo - 1.4
On a side note, according to the Twitter page of NPD industry analyst Anita Frazier, the top five franchises so far in 2009, in terms of dollar sales, are: Call of Duty, Wii Fit, Mario Bros., Guitar Hero, and Rock Band.
5 Comments
December 15, 2009
Thats pretty impressive considering that Modern Warfare 2 just launched last month while other games from this list have had several months on the sales charts to build up their numbers.
December 15, 2009
Poor Sony was totally shut out . . . Uncharted 2 deserves to be up there.
And poor TTWO and THQI also got shut out. But then again, even the might ERTS got only 1 title on there at the very bottom of the list. Wii gamers really need to buy some 3rd party software.
December 17, 2009
The 1 2 P, the Call of Duty games are extremely front-loaded, it's safe to predict that at LEAST half of the games total sales will be from that first month. Nintendo's games will continue to sell for years (hell, New Super Mario Bros. continues to be in the to 20 despite being 4 years old).
December 18, 2009
Modern Warfare 2 did sell a ton its first month, but there's no reason to believe that's where the game's sales will cap. I think the first Modern Warfare sold about 5 million its first couple months and eventually went on to move 13 million copies.
December 20, 2009
That is combining the 2, and the majority of the sales were in the first few months. The game was very front-loaded.