14 DAY TRIAL // The NPD Group, which puts out monthly sales information for the United States market, has released its figures for January and the 2010 blockbuster Call of Duty: Black Ops has managed to top the software sales chart, with the first new entry coming just in third place.
Overall software again performed better than hardware in the NPD Group numbers, managing to generate sales of 576 million dollars, down about five percent over the same period last year, while console sales came in at 324 million.
The NPD Group no longer offers exact sales for each of the titles for the United States monthly top ten chart.
Call of Duty: Black Ops, from developer Treyarch and from publisher Activision Blizzard, has certainly benefited from the launch of its first map pack, First Strike, but the game also had a rather weak new launch line up to do battle with.
Just Dance 2 from Ubisoft has managed to take the second spot.
The first new comer in the video game chart is Dead Space 2, the action horror title from publisher Electronic Arts and developer Visceral, which performed better than the original game in the series and has been pretty much confirmed as getting a sequel himself.
Another new game arrived at number four with Little Big Planet 2 from Media Molecule and Sony managing a good performance despite being a PlayStation 3 exclusive game.
Zumba Fitness: Join the Party from Majesco managed to be the only physical activity-based game in the top ten, with Wii Fit nowhere in sight, while sixth place went to NBA 2K11 from Take Two Interactive.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood continue its good performance for Ubisoft, taking seventh place, while the Kinect-powered Dance Central from Harmonix took eight.
Michael Jackson: The Experience broke through in ninth place while DC Universe Online, the PC and PS3 based superhero MMO from Sony, only managed to take tenth place.