It’s that time of year when everyone has their 2 cents on who the winners for this year are. NPD puts things into mathematical perspective, to end all uncertainty; and to be unbiased in its opinion. I think everyone can appreciate their thorough investigation, but lets be honest… did anyone really need numerical evidence to know who won in 2011? Nope. lol. Anyone following game releases this year knows who’s killing it!
But here’s NPD’s breakdown [by Destructoid] in case you had any doubts…
Nothing was going to top Call of Duty, of course; improving upon Black Ops‘ first-month sales by about 7%.
From October 30 through November 26, does have some surprises in store… Total software sales were up 16% over 2010 to $1.74 billion, a new record; the previous high came in November 2008.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Bethesda Softworks’ expansive and engrossing RPG, came in at number two; NPD analyst Anita Frazier reports that after just one month, it’s only about half a million units shy of Oblivion‘s lifetime sales.
Battlefield 3‘s performance, while not up to par with MW3, wasn’t too shabby: it sold well enough to place in third and become the best-selling game in franchise history.
Frazier points out that two other platform exclusives, Nintendo’s Super Mario 3D Land (625,000 units sold) and Microsoft’s Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, would have made the top ten if the list included only single-SKU sales. Here’s the full list of software sales rankings:
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (360, PS3, Wii, PC)**
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (360, PS3, PC)**
- Battlefield 3 (360, PS3, PC)**
- Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (360, PS3, PC)
- Just Dance 3 (Wii, 360)
- Madden NFL 12 (360, PS3, Wii, PSP, PS2)**
- Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (PS3)**
- Saints Row: The Third (360, PS3, PC)**
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii)**
- Batman: Arkham City (360, PS3, PC)**
**(includes CE, GOTY editions, bundles, etc. but not those bundled with hardware)
Hardware sales dropped by 9% to $982.4 million, and accessories came in at $273.8 million, a 34% decline. US retail sales constituted $3 billion, up only 0.4% compared to 2010.
Xbox 360 sales jumping 23% year-over-year to 1.7 million units — Microsoft sold 960,000 Xbox 360s and 750,000 Kinects.
Sony sold 900,000 PlayStation 3’s, a 70% leap from a year ago, but the 800,000-unit gap between the 360 and the PS3 was “the largest we’ve seen since December 2008 when the Nintendo DS was the top selling system,” said Frazier.
Nintendo, for its part, enjoyed the 3DS’s best month yet: thanks to the 795,000 units that Americans bought in November, Nintendo has now sold more 3DS systems in eight months (almost 2.5 million) than they sold of the original DS in its first year (2.37 million).
Take a look at the month’s overall hardware sales:
Xbox 360: 1.7M
PlayStation 3: 900,000
Wii: 860,000
3DS: 795,000
DS: 350,000
According to Frazier, the numbers bump for each system between October and November 2011 was “in line with typical seasonality trends,”.