On Thursday, the NPD Group released the numbers for the overall game sales, top selling consoles and top selling video games for this past month of February in the U.S. This past month, game sales increased by 28% from $345 million to $441 million and hardware sales nearly doubled, from $203 million in February 2006, to $402 million this past month. As a whole, the gaming industry took in $978 million, which is up nearly 53% from January. The top selling consoles for February are as followed:
1. Nintendo DS – 485,000 units
2. Nintendo Wii – 335,000
3. PlayStation 2 – 295,000
4. Xbox 360 – 228,000
5. PlayStation Portable – 176,000
6. PlayStation 3 – 127,000
The top selling game of February was Microsoft’s Crackdown, which sold 427,000 copies. The top 10 games are as followed:
1. Crackdown – Xbox 360
2. Wii Play with Wii Remote – Wii
3. Diddy Kong Racing – DS
4. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess – Wii
5. Guitar Hero 2 bundle – PlayStation 2
6. Gears of War – Xbox 360
7. MLB 2K7 – Xbox 360
8. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition – Xbox 360
9. WarioWare: Smooth Moves – Wii
10. NBA Street: Homecourt – Xbox 360
Nintendo proudly announced that the DS and Wii clinched the top two slots for best-selling systems in February, and those two accounted for 54% of system sales. Also, Nintendo clinched four of the top 10 slots for the best selling games in February.
Microsoft is obviously very happy for nabbing the top selling game for February and stated that an average of 5.4 games were sold per Xbox 360, compared to 2.3 for the PS3 and 2.8 for the Wii. Microsoft was also ecstatic about having five of the top 10 best selling games. With five slots taken, this shows that not only are customers responding well to newer 360 game releases (namely Crackdown and MLB 2K7), but older game sales are lingering in the market (namely Gears of War and Lost Planet).
Despite appearing low in the lists, Sony maintained a confident attitude. A Sony rep told GameSpot that its system sales brought in 67% more retail dollars than in February 2006. PlayStation 2 system sales are still doing well and with the recent release of God of War II, more folks may be dusting off their PS2s or picking up a new system, as the game has been gathering critical success (read our review here).
