Nintendo's Wii Sports Resort was the bestselling video game in the U.S. last month, moving more than a half million copies—and Wii MotionPlus add-ons—with one exception. It was actually outsold by EA Sports NCAA Football 10.*
* Combined, that is. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of this year's NCAA Football joined forces to sell over 613,000 copies, besting Wii Sports Resort in multi-SKU semantics. Across all platforms, the NPD Group says, EA Sports' college footballer moved over 689,000 units. I smell sequel!
The line up is, like most months, Nintendo platform heavy. Seven of the top ten games are Wii or Nintendo DS titles, including plenty of evergreen entries like New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart Wii.
Here are July 2009's bestselling games, from the NPD Group.
01. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) - 508,200
02. NCAA Football 10 (Xbox 360) - 376,500
03. NCAA Football 10 (PS3) - 237,400
04. Wii Fit (Wii) - 164,300
05. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) - 156,600
06. Mario Kart DS (DS) - 132,200
07. Pokemon Platinum (DS) - 116,400
08. Fight Night Round 4 (Xbox 360) - 116,400
09. New Super Mario Bros. (DS) - 101,800
10. EA Sports Active (Wii) - 96,800
All that spending amounted to $436.99 million by U.S. consumers, off 26% from the previous year.
Anita Frazier, NPD analyst, has some bad news for some portions of the industry. "Of all genres, the music/dance genre has suffered the greatest declines this year, with nearly $390 million less revenues than the same time period last year," she says. "In order for the industry to come in flat or slightly up for the total year, the back five months of the year have to come in 11% (or more) higher than the last five months of last year."
That means Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 really has its work cut out for it.
"While year-to-date results are weak, there are some big titles set to be released over the next several months, including Madden this month, which should help spur sales," Frazier notes. "The worst comps should be behind us, and looking beyond August we have The Beatles: Rock Band, Halo 3: ODST, and of course, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to look forward to."