Well-read sales analysis enthusiasts are already well aware that some of January's most anticipated games did not become January's bestselling games. While some new properties, like THQ's Darksiders, managed a top ten showing, some settled for the top 20.
Gamasutra's monthly, more in-depth and less instant analysis of the month's bestselling games shows that two of January's bigger names, Sega's Bayonetta and Sony's MAG, managed to find a place near the top of the charts, but did not perform well enough for top ten bragging rights.
Bayonetta managed to score somewhere above 100,000 sales on the Xbox 360, with the PlayStation 3 version not charting, moving less than 100,000. Whether that's good or bad is up to Sega and PlatinumGames, but we were hoping for better for the game, given its three weeks worth of sales.
MAG managed to outsell Bayonetta with only five days on the market, potentially good news for Zipper Interactive and fans of the PS3 shooter. Not as good as Mass Effect 2, which released the same day in the U.S., but not a bad start.
There's more to all this NPD data analyzing than just focusing on individual games that succeeded to varying degrees, which you can read at Gamasutra.
NPD: Behind the Numbers, January 2010 [Gamasutra]