14 DAY TRIAL // The NPD Group has revealed its sales data for the month of December for the North American market, showing that Call of Duty continued its good run at the top of the software chart while the Xbox 360 has been the only console to see an increase in sales.
A look at all the data shows that December was not a huge month for the video game industry, with overall value of sales coming down by about 6 percent over December 2009 to reach a little over 5 billion dollars.
Software continues to perform better than hardware in the same time frame with total new retail software sales, with PC games accounted for (without digital distribution), going down 5% to reach 2.53 billion dollars.
The NPD Group mentions that PC gaming was an especially strong performer with the Cataclysm launch for World of Warcraft pushing the sector up by more than 60 percent, meaning that the expansion has actually been the third best-selling title when all platforms are taken into account.
The best-selling video game has been Call of Duty: Black Ops, the first-person shooter developed by Treyarch and published by Activision, with more than 3.6 million copies sold across the three platforms on which it has launched.
Just Dance 2 from Ubisoft managed to take second spot, with Cataclysm in third.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood from Ubisoft also managed to continue its strong run and to take fourth spot in December while fifth place marks the appearance of the first Wii-based title in the form of Donkey Kong Country Returns from Nintendo.
The rest of the top ten is made up of: Disney Epic Mickey from Disney Interactive Studios, Madden NFL 11 from Electronic Arts, Michael Jackson: The Experience from Ubisoft, NBA 2K11 from Take-Two Interactive and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit from Electronic Arts.
The NPD Group no longer offers actual sales numbers for its video games based chart.