Nintendo Again Dominates NPD Top 20

In a month that saw a 31 percent decline in U.S. game retail revenues -- the worst since September 2000 -- Nintendo again dominated the top 20 top-selling titles for June, according to new charts revealed by NPD. Although the firm already revealed that Activision's Prototype was the overall chart-topper for the month, 10 out of the full top 20 are titles for Nintendo platforms. Eight of those 10 are first-party. The PS3 SKU of Prototype placed significantly lower in the top 20. More popular on Sony's platform was Infamous, supporting analyst forecasts that the first-party title could outdo its rival on the PS3 by 35 percent in North America this year and by as much as 50 percent over its lifetime. It's an example, analysts say, of the "exclusivity bump" by which exclusives can often beat comparable multiplatform releases on their home hardware. The full U.S. video game retail top 20 for the month of June 2009, according to NPD, is as follows: 1. Prototype (Activision) - Xbox 360 2. UFC 2009: Undisputed (THQ) - Xbox 360 3. EA Sports Active Bundle (EA) - Wii 4. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (EA) - Wii 5. Wii Fit (Nintendo) - Wii 6. Fight Night Round 4 (EA) - Xbox 360 7. Fight Night Round 4 (EA) - PlayStation 3 8. Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo) - Wii 9. Red Faction: Guerrilla (THQ) - Xbox 360 10. Infamous (Sony) - PlayStation 3 11. Ghostbusters (Atari) - Xbox 360 12. UFC 2009: Undisputed (THQ) - PlayStation 3 13. Prototype (Activision) - PlayStation 3 14. Pokemon Platinum (Nintendo) - DS 15. Punch-Out!! (Nintendo) - Wii 16. Wii Play (Nintendo) - Wii 17. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (EA) - Xbox 360 18. Mario Kart DS -(Nintendo) - DS 19. The Legendary Starfy (Nintendo) - DS 20. New Super Mario Bros (Nintendo) - DS Hardware adoption is supporting strong DS software sales. "More consumers continued to gravitate toward products that offer quality experiences and great value for the whole family," said Nintendo sales and marketing VP Cammie Dunaway in a statement. "Consumers again selected Nintendo systems for those experiences, particularly our hand-helds." According to Nintendo's own data passed on after yesterday's NPD results, the DS and DSi combined in June to sell over 766,000 units, more than the sum total of all the other present-gen platforms. In particular, adoption of the newer DSi handheld variant appears to be accelerating, with 424,000 units purchased of the new model in June, versus 342,000 of the DS.