A fighting game blow-out. An EA surprise. As always, some notable omissions. And an NPD-PD PlayStation bump! For your May NPD gaming sales armchair analysis, consider the following:
Killzone Leads Infamous For Biggest 2009 PS3 Original: The PlayStation 3 push for original first-party games gave the world Killzone 2 in February, which managed 323,000 units sold in its first two days of sales. Infamous, the next big PS3 original, which was on sale for four days during the latest sales reporting period, sold 176,000.
UFC Pummels Punch-Out: Great reviews and an aggressive web marketing campaign from Nintendo didn't help the Wii edition of Punch-Out compete in the same league with THQ's PS3/Xbox 360 UFC: Undisputed. The cartoony boxing game managed about 150k in sales, while UFC cracked a million, despite the games being released within a day of each other.
A Rare Wii Third-Party Fast-Starter: Usually, third-party games on the Wii don't start strong. There are exceptions. For example, launched in 2006, Red Steel reached a million units sold on the Wii in about six months. Guitar Hero III sold more than 200,000 on the Wii in its first month of sales in late 2007. But most third-party Wii games have crept softly out of the gate while the likes of Wii Fit and Wii Play garnered more glory. Not this month! Enter EA Sports Active, making one of the best debuts of a third-party game on the Wii with about 346,000 units sold.
Notable new releases that failed to make the overall software top 10 (selling under 109,000 units in the U.S.): Battlestations Pacific (May 12), Bionic Commando (May 19), Boom Blox Bash Party (May 19), Terminator Salvation (May 19), Personal Trainer Walking (May 25)
May 2009 U.S. Video Game Hardware Sales - NPD-PD version
Daily averages based on the May NPD date range: 5/3/09-5/30/09
Nintendo DS - 22,625 units/day (down 15,894)
Wii - 10,339 units/day (down 2,254)
Xbox 360 - 6,250 units/day (down 231)
PS3 - 4,679 units/day (up 25)
PS2 - 4,179 units/day (down 2,191)
PSP - 3,586 units/day (down 710)