NPD Software: Halo 3 Is Triumphant

The best sold videogame of September was Halo 3: ODST from Bungie and Microsoft. It was the only release that broke through the 1 million sales barrier, to reach a total of 1.52 in just one month.

Second spot went to Wii Sport Resort, which is being sold bundled with the Motion Plus add on, that managed to ship more than 442,900 units in the same period while Madden NFL 10, judged to be a bit of a disappointment by Electronic Arts, took third spot with sales of 289,000 on the Xbox 360. The PlayStation 3 version of the American football game is at number six, with 246,500 copies sold.

Fourth place was occupied by Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story for the DS, which moved 258,100 units, while number five went to The Beatles Rock Band from Harmonix and MTV Games with a rather low 254,000 on the Xbox 360. The PS3 version of the title is at number ten with 208,600 units moved to gamers. Its direct rival, Guitar Hero 5, sits at number nine with a little over 210,000 in sales.

The top ten also welcomed Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 for the Xbox 360 at number seven and Batman: Arkham Asylum, which managed to sell 236,000 on the PlayStation 3, one of the few multiplatform games that sold better on the Sony platform than on the Microsoft hardware.

Anita Frazier, an analyst for the NPD Group, commented on the chart saying that “Halo 3 certainly impacted the industry two years ago (Sep'07) when it was launched, and this year, Halo 3: ODST realized impressive sales making it the 6th best-selling SKU launch of all time.”

Year over year, the revenue from videogame sales went up by about 5%, reaching 649.32 million dollars and helping the industry overall to show a big growth over August 2009 and a slow increase over September 2008.