Racking up a cool US$1.47 billion sales month, the US video game industry was clearly still going strong in February, according to the latest data from market research firm The NPD Group.
On the hardware front, the Xbox 360 had its largest non-holiday sales month, with 391,000 units flying off shelves. The PS3 also experienced a healthy spike, posting the greatest month-over-month unit sales increase across all platforms, with 271,000 units sold.
But Nintendo proved that it still rules the gaming charts – Wii system sales were up an impressive 74% over February 2008 to almost 753,000 units. Retail performance of the DS was equally strong at 588,000 units sold, and so the two Nintendo platforms finished strong as the top-selling hardware systems for the month.
Game-wise, Nintendo’s Wii Fit (with Balance Board) dominated as the number-one SKU in February’s software top 10. Coming in at number four, with Wii Play, packaged with a Wii-mote, has exceeded more than 10 million units in the US since its February 2007 debut.
The fact that the average retail price of games dipped by 4% from last year may have encouraged consumers to pick up more software titles this February – 20 million units sold through for the month, representing a 14% bump from February ’08.
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