February's U.S. software champ, Wii Fit, didn't have the strength to fight off the combined forces of Resident Evil 5, Pokemon Platinum and Halo Wars, the top three bestselling games in March.
The Xbox 360 version of the survival horror adventure walked away with the number one spot, moving 938,000 copies to U.S. consumers. Its PlayStation 3 counterpart moved 585,000, giving Sony's current generation platform three titles in the top ten, including MLB 09: The Show and Killzone 2. The latter of those saw sales close to that of its debut month, moving another 296,000 copies in March. Sony announced earlier today that Killzone 2 has sold 1 million copies worldwide since launch.
Chart regulars Wii Play and Mario Kart Wii combined for another half million in sales, with 2K Sports' MLB game rounding out the top ten. Missing from the top ten is Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, which looks to have sold on par with EEDAR's estimate of 200,000 copies or less. Guess we'll go with "risk" on that.
The top ten bestselling games in the U.S. for the month of March, according to the NPD Group are...
01. Resident Evil 5 (X360) - 938,000
02. Pokemon Platinum (DS) - 805,000
03. Halo Wars (X360) - 639,000
04. Resident Evil 5 (PS3) - 585,000
05. Wii Fit (Wii) - 541,000
06. MLB 09: The Show (PS3) - 305,000
07. Killzone 2 (PS3) - 296,000
08. Wii Play (Wii) - 281,000
09. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) - 278,000
10. MLB 2K9 (X360) - 205,000
Video game software sold to the tune of $792.83 million in March, a 17% drop year over year. That puts annual industry sales at $2.21 billion, which would indicate a drop in total revenue for the year.
And that's not too good.