The NPD Group, which tracks videogaming related sales in the United States, has just released its charts for the month of September and there are some really big surprises inside, regarding both the hardware and the software sectors.

Overall sales of videogames have brought in more than 616 million dollars. The figure is impressive but it means that sales are nearly 6% lower than during same month of 2007. The reason could be that recession hit America is more likely to pass up on buying videogames, but one should also keep in mind that sales in September 2007 were boosted by the release of the highly anticipated Halo 3.

The big winner of the month is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, the game published by LucasArts initially welcomed with criticism. The game has a pretty good storyline, combined with spectacular graphics and with the Star Wars setting, but the fighting is sometimes chaotic and the controls can be a chore. The game managed to sell more than 1 million copies across all platforms, taking the first spot in the videogames sales chart. The game sold best on the Xbox 360, with 610,000 copies taken home by customers, followed by the PlayStation 3 version and the Nintendo Wii variant.

Wii Fit continues to sell very well, with more than half a million games sold in one month, which puts it second in the chart, followed by Rock Band 2, which managed a good launch and will give Guitar Hero: World Tour a run for its money when the Activision title is released later in the year.

One nasty piece of news for Electronic Arts is that Madden NFL 09 had a bad month, with the Xbox 360 version of the game selling just 224,000 copies, with both Wii Play and Mercenaries 2 selling better in the United States.

Anita Frazier, who is an analysts for the NPD Group, said that “Although PC games sales are not included in these numbers, there were two that should be pointed out. Spore realized sales of 406,000 units and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning sold 274K which would put them both in the top 10 list of combined console, portable and PC games sales for the month”.