NPD: Game software sales down 12% in January
New Super Mario Bros leads sales at the start of the year
US game retail sales in January were down 12 per cent year-on-year to $597.9m, according to the latest NPD figures.
The drop in software sales added to the overall decline in growth experienced by the whole retail games space in January, which amounted to a 13 per cent decline from January 2009.
Among the best selling software for the month was Nintendo's New Super Mario Bros Wii, which came out on top with 656,700 units sold, narrowly beating the more recently released Mass Effect 2.
Mass Effect managed 572,100 sales, and Wii Fit Plus was just behind with 555,700 units sold.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox 360 was at number four, with 326,700 units sold, Mario Kart was at five with 310,900 and Wii Sports Resort followed with 297,600 sales.
The remaining top ten games were Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on PS3, Army of Two: The 40th Day, Just Dance and Darksiders.
According to Microsoft, the platform holder generated $158m from Xbox 360 sales in January, with $150.5m of that coming from third-party titles - which it claimed was the highest spend of the three consoles.
Sales for January across the whole of the games sector totalled £1.17bn.