USA Charts: Pokemon and Star Wars lead May sales boost

The latest sales figures from North America show Nintendo's Pokemon Emerald and LucasArts' Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith topping the charts, while overall sales grew by a massive 30.5 per cent year on year.

Pokemon Emerald was the biggest seller of the month, with the GBA title managing over 880,000 sales, followed by Revenge of the Sith on PS2 (490,000 units) and then on the Xbox (378,000 units).

Microsoft's Forza Motorsport also sold well, managing around 185,000 units, and two other titles also sold over 100,000 units - namely Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition and LEGO Star Wars, both on PS2.

The software market overall grew by 30.5 per cent in value terms, which is far ahead of most analyst expectations for the month, and continues a trend of strong growth which has been evident since January.

It's also notable that hardware sales are also doing well; although this sector is down by 1 per cent in value terms due to price cuts, it's actually up three per cent in unit terms, with the PlayStation 2 up by eight per cent and the PlayStation Portable shifting a quarter of a million units in the month, although both Xbox and GameCube saw sales declines of 40 and 35 per cent respectively.

So far this year, NPD has tracked $1.97 billion of console software sales in North America - compared with just $1.70 billion last year, which suggests that the industry is on track for yet another record year.