U.S. video game sales in April weren’t spectacular. They were down 23% year-over-year. Mind you, April 2008 was huge, with Grand Theft Auto IV and Mario Kart Wii rocketing to the top of the charts.
April 2009 wasn’t quite as storied, with Wii Fit topping the NPD Group‘s software sales chart with 471,000 units sold. That’s far lower than the chart topper from the same month last year—GTA IV for the Xbox 360 sold 1.85 million copies then.
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The rest of the list features some perennial bestsellers, with Mario Kart Wii, Wii Play and New Super Mario Bros. selling well enough to get top ten status. The only new game to appear is The Godfather II for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
01. Wii Fit (Wii) – 471,000
02. สล็อต Pokemon Platinum (DS) – 433,000
03. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) – 210,000
04. Wii Play (Wii) – 170,000
05. The Godfather II (X360) – 155,000
06. Resident Evil 5 (X360) – 122,000
07. New Super Mario Bros. (DS) – 119,000
08. Mario Kart DS (DS) – u31 112,000
09. Guitar Hero Aerosmith (X360) – 110,000
10. The Godfather II (PS3) – 91,000
Total video game software sales for April 2009 were $510.74 million, down from the $660.10 million the industry brought in the previous April. Total sales for the year is now $2.72 billion, a 6% decline for the year.
“April would have been a great month to release a big new game because there weren’t a lot of high profile new releases,” noted NPD analyst Anita Frazier. “In fact, you can see that the top 10 list for the month includes many games we’ve seen on the list for months, if not years.”
Frazier also notes: “The number of new releases this month is fairly comparable to what was introduced last April, but GTA IV (on both PS3 and the 360) sold nearly 1 million more units last April than the entire top 10 list did this year. April 2008 also featured the release of Mario Kart for Wii, which has remained h25 a top-selling game for this past year, and is on this month’s top 10 list as well. This really illustrates the impact of comparing against a month when there were several new blockbuster titles new to the market.”