The Nintendo DS games Pokémon Black and White and the original DS hardware were top sellers for March, the NPD Group said Thursday.
The two versions of Nintendo's latest creature-collection game were the two biggest games of March, the market research group said in its monthly report on retail game sales. Specifically, NPD analyst Anita Frazier said that Pokémon White had the best debut month of any game ever in the long-running role-playing game franchise. Combined, the two games had the best first month ever in the series' history with nearly 2.5 million copies total.
Although Nintendo 3DS released in the U.S. in March, it was the original Nintendo DS, spurred on no doubt by the release of the Pokémon games, that was the biggest-selling game platform of the month. It sold over 460,000 units while 3DS sold just under 400,000 units, Nintendo said.
- Pokemon White Version (NDS)
- Pokemon Black Version (NDS)
- Homefront (360, PS3, PC)
- Dragon Age II (360, PS3, PC)
- Call of Duty: Black Ops (360, PS3, NDS, Wii, PC)
- Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (Wii, 360, NDS, PS3, 3DS, PSP, PC)
- Crysis 2 (360, PS3, PC)
- NBA 2K11 (360, PS3, PS2, Wii, PSP, PC)
- MLB 11: The Show (PS3, PSP, PS2)
- Fight Night Champion (360, PS3)
The best-selling 3DS game, NPD said, was Capcom's Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition.
Microsoft said in a statement Thursday that Xbox 360 had outsold both Wii and PlayStation 3 with 433,000 units sold. Nintendo said it sold about 290,000 Wii systems.
Sony declined to give exact numbers for PlayStation hardware sales, only saying that its business "saw double digit growth across hardware and peripherals."
Addenda:
Nintendo took this occasion to hide a nasty surprise in its NPD email. In announcing new products and services that will arrive in the coming months, it said this about its 3DSWare download shop: "The system update also delivers a solution for Nintendo DSi and Nintendo DSi XL owners to easily transfer most of their Nintendo DSiWare games to their new Nintendo 3DS systems."
Emphasis mine. Looks like some of your DSiWare games will go down the memory hole.
Speaking of downloadable content: NPD now goes to great lengths, with each of these sales reports, to point out that the numbers are only the sales of boxed software at retail and thus do not reflect on the game industry as a whole, since downloaded games, in-game ads and in-game payments are not counted.
NPD left off its report with a data point that illustrates just how the industry is shifting to digital: The top-selling videogame accessory this month across the entire market was a $20 card for PlayStation Network purchases.
See Also:- NPD Analysis: How to Sell a Wii Game
