14 DAY TRIAL // March has been an interesting month for videogames, with quite a few high profile launches happening, and the NPD Group figures which came out show that God of War 3, the ending of the revenge saga featuring Spartan Kratos, managed to be the best sold game of the month in the United States, selling about 1.10 million copies despite being a PlayStation 3 exclusive.
Second place, in a rather surprising move, is being occupied by Pokemon Soul Silver, a game released by Nintendo for the DS handheld, which managed sales of 1.02 million dollars. Its Heart Gold counterpart landed in fifth place with sales of 761,200 units. The two games are updates of older titles which still managed to beat more recent releases like Final Fantasy XIII, which managed to sell 828,200 on the PlayStation 3 to get third place and 493,900 copies on the Xbox 360.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the first person shooter from DICE and Electronic Arts, managed to sell 825,500 units on the Xbox 360 to land fourth place and 451,200 copies on the PS3 to get eight as well. New Super Mario Bros Wii is at number seven in the software chart, with a further 457,400 copies moved to gamers and probably a long chart life ahead of it. The top ten is complemented by Wii Fit Plus with 429,600 in sales and by Major League Baseball 10: The Show from Sony for the PlayStation 3, which took tenth place with 349,200 copies sold.
It's quite interesting to note that for the first time in quite a long time, the PlayStation 3 home console from Sony has occupied four positions in the top ten, including the first place with God of War 3, while the Xbox 360 only managed to place two cross platform titles and the Wii and DS also took two positions each.
Overall, the industry managed to grow by 6% year over year, which is good news. The biggest contributor to the increase has been videogame sales, which reached 875.3 million dollars, with four titles managing to sell more than 1 million units.