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.
Complete numbers and hardware after the break..

With Empire: Total War nowhere to be seen on Direct2Drive's charts, there's only a single game that made the top 10 across all three outlets over the past few weeks. And it was Fallout 3!

Yes, Bethesda's RPG soldiers on, with more and more gamers each week drawn into its tale of post-apocalyptic intrigue and rat punching. Who knows. One day, it may stop inexplicably crashing and actually work on my PC.

NPD Charts May 10-16

This week's Japanese software sales chart is packed with new games populating the top ten, with Atlus' redux remake of Persona for the PSP outselling all new competitors.

The PlayStation Portable title, with its updated presentation and various refinements, bested new Nintendo DS games like Dragon Ball Z: Story Saiyajin Raishuu and Nintendo's latest WarioWare title Made in Ore. Last week's champ, Wii-make Monster Hunter G, showed decent legs, with sales reaching 172,000 in just two weeks on the market.

The chart's influx of new titles pushed a few former top ten games (i.e. Killzone 2) out of more prominent spots, with Xbox 360 shoot 'em up Death Smiles disappearing from the Media Create chart altogether. Sold out or just burnt out?

Japan's bestselling games are after this.

01. Persona (PSP) - 79,000 / NEW
02. Dragon Ball Z: Story Saiyajin Raishuu (DS) - 74,000 / NEW
03. Made in Ore (DS) - 56,000 / NEW
04. Jikkyou Powerful Major League 2009 (PS2) - 43,000 / NEW
05. Pokémon Fushigi no Dungeon: Sora no Tankentai (DS) - 43,000 / 239,000
06. Monster Hunter G (Wii) - 40,000 / 172,000
07. ToraDora Portable! (PSP) - 38,000 / NEW
08. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (PSP the Best) (PSP) - 26,000 / 639,000
09. Mario & Luigi RPG3!!! (DS) - 22,000 / 580,000
10. Jikkyou Powerful Major League 2009 (Wii) - 16,000 / NEW
More after the break..

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.

All the fun numbers and more, after the break..

Let's
congratulate Relic's Dawn of War II, which has, for the first time in recent memory, managed to come in to the top spot across all three charts.

That's
right. Dawn of War II stands astride the NPD, Steam and Direct2Drive
best-seller lists like a colossus, leaving even Sega's Empire: Total
War pre-sales in its dust. A big achievement, sure, but one the game most definitely deserves.

Numbers after the break..

At least 1.8 million copies of Left 4 Dead have been sold at retail since launch (on both 360 & PC) (but we'd love to see the digital download figures instead).

Because hot on the heels of new product or DLC announcements this week, the game has returned to the #1 spot on Steam's charts. It's even experiencing a retail renaissance of sorts, climbing to #4 on NPD's shopfront charts. Were the game available on Direct2Drive, it'd probably be near the top on that, too.

NPD Sales Charts January 25-31 (via Shacknews)

The NPD Group released data for the "Top Selling Games Annual 2008" with Wii Play coming in at number one, boasting 5.28 million copies sold.

Wii Play's sales for the year beat out Grand Theft Auto IV with a combined total of 5.18 million copies sold on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. But that doesn't take into account GTA IV's PC sales. Not trying to take anything away from Wii Play here or NPD's ranking methodology, but we're missing some important data to determine the sales king of 2008's retail mountain.

It’s a new entry this week that takes the Japanese Software Sales crown. Wii Music has debuted atop the Japanese software sales chart for the week ended October 19, according to data provided by Media Create.

The Nintendo Wii title broke into the chart with 92,000 units, followed by Pokemon Platinum for the Nintendo DS, which holds onto its position from last week at second place with 72,000 units, with a total of 1,754,000 units sold since its release.

Placed at No. 3 is another new entry, Sony's Dungeon Keeper-like title, a PSP game by the name of Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida Or 2, with 59,000 sold. Weekly top contender Rhythm Tengoku Gold is still charting extremely strongly at No. 4, from No 3 last week, with 51,000 copies sold for a total of 1,010,000 units. Another Japanese Software Chart debut is Culdcept DS, squeezing into the No. 5 spot by managing to sell 50,000 units for the week. The last new entry to the Top Ten this week is Kidou Senshi Gundam 00: Gundam Meisters for PS2, with 43,000 units sold, slotting in at No. 6.

With all of these new entries, what happened to the rest of the pack? Read more after the break..

Since we've been talking numbers the last couple post or so, here are some of the "to date" sales number from Japan as published recently by Media Create. we also have the hardware sales for the last week, with Sony's Portable gaining ground, and surpassing the DS's weekly sales figures.

2008-04-17 - Super Smash Bros. Brawl boosted Wii sales to abnormal heights last month, according to official console ware bean counter, the NPD Group.

As far as hardware numbers go, Nintendo sold 720,000 Wiis last month; more than double that of combined Xbox 360 and PS3 sales, and almost enough to match the combined sales of all other consoles when including PS2.

"Across hardware, software, and accessories, the Wii contributed the most to total industry sales, representing 31% of total industry dollars for the month," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

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