NPD: Uncharted 2 tops October sales charts
PlayStation 3 exclusive manages to outsell significant competition at 537,000 units
Sony Comptuer Entertainment's action-adventure title Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, a game exclusive to the PlayStation 3, was the top selling game in the US for the month of October.
At 537,000 units, the game managed to outsell several notable October premieres, including Nintendo's Wii Fit Plus, Take-Two's Borderlands, Microsoft's Forza Motosport 3, and EA's FIFA Soccer 10.
The overall top selling game when combining SKUs was Take-Two's professional basketball simulation NBA 2K10, which sold 575,000 units.
"It was a great launch for [NBA 2K10], outselling last year's NBA 2K9 by 60 per cent in its launch month," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier. "Sales on both the Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms improved substantially over last year."
Although software revenue declined 18 per cent for the month, unit sales were down only 11 per cent. "The average retail price of software decreased 8 per cent, which led to the greater dollar sales decline," explained Frazier.
Wii Fit Plus was the second best-selling individual SKU title, at 441,000 units. "Roughly half the sales were generated by the bundled SKU, which points to a lot of newcomers to the franchise," commented Frazier.
Notably absent from the top ten is any games in the music genre, including September premieres The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5, though Frazier points out that these titles "have the potential to be good gifting items for the holidays," and that the NPD expects sales to increase over the next two months. Overall the music genre generated only USD 53 million in revenue for October, versus USD 137 million the previous year.
The top ten software sales chart for October follows.
- Uncharted 2: Amont Thieves (Sony, PS3) - 537,000
- Wii Fit Plus (Nintendo, Wii) - 441,000
- Borderlands (Take-Two, Xbox 360) - 418,000
- Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo, Wii) - 314,000
- NBA 2K10 (Take-Two, Xbox 360) - 311,000
- Halo 3: ODST (Microsoft, Xbox 360) - 271,000
- NBA 2K10 (Take-Two, PS3) - 213,000
- Forza Motorsport 3 (Microsoft, Xbox 360) - 175,000
- Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (Square Enix, Nintendo DS) - 169,000
- FIFA Soccer 10 (Electronic Arts, Xbox 360) - 156,000