14 DAY TRIAL // The NPD Group, as part of an end of year wrap up, has offered a list of the ten best selling PC videogames in the United States in 2009, showing that The Sims 3, created by the team at Maxis and published by Electronic Arts, sold better than World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, the MMO expansion put out by Activision Blizzard.
The result is a bit surprising, as World of Warcraft is the biggest MMO in the world, when it comes to the subscriber base.The NPD Group is saying that, overall, the PC videogaming market shrank by 23% over the course of 2009, while videogame sales, when taking into account the console market, only dropped by 11% during 2009.
Of course, digitally distributed sales are not counted for the chart and as services like Steam, Impulse, GamersGate, Direct2Drive and Good Old Games grow their libraries and become easier to use, physical sales of PC games will continue to go down.
With The Sims 3 and Wrath of the Lich King taking the first two places, Electronic Arts also managed to get third place, with The Sims 2: Double Deluxe, which bundles the original games with some of its expansions. Fourth place went to another Blizzard release, World of Warcraft Battle Chest, while Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 from Infinity Ward and Activision sits in fifth place.
The original World of Warcraft is in sixth, while the World Adventures expansion for The Sims 3 is in seventh, followed by Spore, another Maxis release. Dragon Age: Origins, the old school role playing game from BioWare, is in ninth place, while Empire: Total War, from The Creative Assembly and SEGA, brings up the rear of the chart at ten.