Madden NFL 11
was the best-selling US release in August, achieving sales figures of 920,800 and 893,600 on Xbox 360 and PS3 respectively. Occupying the top and second slots, EA's sports title sold significantly more than next best-selling title.NPD analyst Anita Frazier says: "Sales of this year's game were about 6 per cent higher than last year's in its debut month, but interestingly, all of the gains occurred on the PS3 platform, reflecting the impact of the hardware sales momentum on corresponding software sales."
Despite the Wii's relatively poor hardware sales performance last month, Super Mario Galaxy 2 was the second best-selling game, netting 124,600 sales. Frazier says that Starcraft II: Wings Of Liberty would have occupied this spot if the group had included PC titles in their analysis.
"With over 300,000 units sold at retail in August, Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty would be the second best-selling game for the month if we were reporting on total entertainment software sales," she explains. "In fact, PC games retail dollar sales saw a 35 per cent increase over last August."
Software sales were down 14 per cent year-over-year, from $471.2 to $403.5 million, while year-to-date sales have dropped 8 per cent year-over-year, from $4.71 to $4.32 billion.
"Last August, we didn't see as big of a sales gap between the first and second best-selling games," says Frazier. "After Madden NFL 10 last year, we had both Wii Sports Resort, and Batman Arkham Asylum, which both sold over 500,000 units in August 2009. This year the top ten games sold 3.3 million units as opposed to 4.1 million for the top ten last year."
Monthly software sales by SKU (figures only provided for top five):
01. Madden NFL 11 (Electronic Arts, Xbox 360) - 920,800
02. Madden NFL 11 (Electronic Arts, PS3) - 893,600
03. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nintendo, Wii) - 124,600
04. Mafia II (Take 2 Interactive, Xbox 360) - 121,600
05. New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, DS) - 110,400
06. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo, Wii)
07. Mafia II (Take 2 Interactive, PS3)
08. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Activision, Xbox 360)
09. NCAA Football 11 (Electronic Arts, Xbox 360)
10. Wii Fit Plus (Nintendo, Wii)