NPD: August software sales up 13% in the US
Three Madden SKUs lock out the most popular chart positions across the month
The latest software sales results from NPD have been released showing a 13 per cent rise in revenues across the month, from USD 489 million to USD 500 million.
That's much lower than analyst expectations posted earlier in the week, with Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter predicting a 23 per cent hike year-on-year, and EEDAR's Jesse Divnich expecting 21 per cent.
Even so, there was no denying which title was the big winner throughout the month, with three separate SKUs of EA's Madden NFL 09 taking the top three places on the chart, headed by the Xbox 360 edition on 1 million units, and followed by the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 3 editions on 643,000 and 424,500 units respectively.
The Wii trio of Wii Fit, Wii Mario Kart and Wii Play followed them up in fourth to sixth places, while the Xbox 360 edition of Soulcalibur IV and Microsoft's platform-exclusive Too Human took seventh and eighth.
The Wii version of Madden was ninth, with Guitar Hero: On Tour for the Nintendo DS finishing the list.
The full top ten run down is as follows:
- 1. Madden NFL 09 (360): 1,000,000
- 2. Madden NFL 09 (PS3): 643,000
- 3. Madden NFL 09 (PS2): 424,500
- 4. Wii Fit (Wii): 394,900
- 5. Mario Kart Wii (Wii): 328,700
- 6. Wii Play (Wii): 200,200
- 7. Soulcalibur IV (360): 174,000
- 8. Too Human (360): 168,200
- 9. Madden NFL 09 (Wii): 115,800
- 10. Guitar Hero: On Tour (DS): 111,200