Resident Evil 5 tops US sales charts in March

According to an NPD report released today, Capcom's Resident Evil 5 for the Xbox 360 topped the US sales charts for March, selling 938,000 units between its release date of March 13 and April 4, 2009. The PlayStation 3 version of the same game also showed healthy sales, coming in at number four with 585,000 units sold.

Overall software sales were down 17 per cent in March of 2009, with USD 792.83 million versus USD 952.14 million in the same period last year.

As with the decline in hardware sales, NPD analyst Anita Frazier attributed the fall in software sales to the Easter holiday falling in April this year, as well as March 2008's release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii.

Nintendo's Pokemon Platinum for the Nintendo DS, released in the US toward the end of the month, came in second place with 805,000 units sold. Microsoft's Halo Wars, which saw a March 3 debut, sold 693,000 units.

Two more March premieres made their way into the top ten list, both of them Major League Baseball titles - Sony's MLB '09: The Show and Take 2's Major League Baseball 2K9. The rest of the top ten list shows continued strong performances from previous months, including Wii Fit, Killzone 2, Wii Play, and Mario Kart Wii.

The full list is below:

• Resident Evil 5 (Capcom, Xbox 360) - 938,000
• Pokemon Platinum (Nintendo, DS) - 805,000
• Halo War (Microsoft, Xbox 360) - 639,000
• Resident Evil 5 (Capcom, PS3) - 585,000
• Wii Fit (Nintendo, Wii) - 541,000
• MLB ‘09: The Show (Sony, PS3) - 305,000
• Killzone 2 (Sony, PS3) - 296,000
• Wii Play (Nintendo, Wii) - 281,000
• Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo, Wii) - 278,000
• Major League Baseball 2K9 (Take 2, Xbox 360) - 205,000