Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello had a right to be discouraged by sales of the latest Madden NFL football game from EA Sports. While it managed to be August’s bestselling game in the U.S., sales were definitely down.
Madden NFL 10 leads the NPD Group‘s top ten with 928,000 units sold on the Xbox 360. That’s a drop from last year’s cool million. And while Madden sales were up year-over-year on the PlayStation 3, the game suffered on the PlayStation 2 and Wii, with the sports game moving less than half of what it did on the PS2 from the same period last year.
All told, Madden NFL 10 managed to move 1.9 million copies across all platforms in August, down from the 2.2 million-plus Madden NFL 09 managed last year.
But NPD Group estimates had good news for Nintendo and Square Enix/Eidos. Wii Sports Resort continues to sell, as does Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii. That means plenty of Wii MotionPlus, Balance Board and Wii Wheel accessories in U.S. homes. Nintendo’s Fossil Fighters for the Nintendo DS managed to crack the NPD top ten, with the kid friendly game moving 92,000 units.
U.S. consumers snapped up 593,000 copies of Batman: Arkham Asylum.
01. Madden NFL 10 (Xbox 360) – 928,000
02. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) – 754,000
03. Madden NFL 10 (PS3) – 665,000
04. Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360) – 303,000
05. Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3) – 290,000
06. Madden NFL 10 (PS2) – 160,000
07. Dissidia: Final Fantasy (PSP) – 130,000
08. Wii Fit (Wii) – 128,000
09. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) – 120,000
10. Fossil Fighters (DS) – 92,000
All told, U.S. game buyers snapped up $470.32 million in games last month, a 15% decline from August of 2008. Here’s NPD analyst Anita Frazier with some silver lining.
“The PS3 was the only platform to realize a year-over-year increase in total software sales and this is reflected in the top 10 list for the month which includes two PS3 games,” says Frazier. It should be an interesting September, when we can see how the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 price drops affected sales of each platform over the course of an entire month.
