NPD Software: Pokemon and Homefront Rule the Month

The sales data released by the NPD Group for the United States video game market in the month of March has shown that Pokemon Black and White, the new entry in the long-running series, and Homefront, the first-person shooter from Kaos Studios and publisher THQ, have managed to top the chart and finally topple Call of Duty: Black Ops from its top position.

Overall, new retail video game sales in the United States, with the PC sector included, has gone down by no less than 15 percent during March when compared to the same period in 2010, mostly because of the weaker launch schedule.

The value reached was 791 million dollars, with the current line up of games unable to reach the same figures posted by God of War 3, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Final Fantasy XIII.

Nintendo says that the two Pokemon video games have managed to perform better than Silver and Gold when they were initially released in early 2000 which means that more than 2.5 million copies have reached gamers during March.

Homefront also did well and managed to take second spot in the video game chart despite the cold reception it got from reviewers.

Until March 24 THQ says that the game sold more than 1 million copies worldwide, with 2.4 million units shipped to retailers.

Fourth place in the NPD data went to Dragon Age 2, the role-playing game from developer BioWare and publisher Electronic Arts, with Call of Duty: Black Ops only managing to come in fifth place.

The rest of the top ten is made up of Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars from LucasArts, Crysis 2 from Crytek and Electronic Arts, NBA 2K11 from Take-Two, MLB 11: The Show from Sony and Fight Night Champion from Electronic Arts.

The NPD Group no longer provides actual sales numbers for the games and the publisher themselves were not quick to give them out either.