NPD Results, January 2011: Industry Down 5% As Black Ops Maintains Sales Lead

The NPD Group has announced its tracking results for new U.S. retail video game sales in January, showing overall revenues for the industry dropping 5 percent compared to the same month last year. New retail sales of video game hardware, software and accessories totaled $1.16 billion for the month. With PC sales excluded, the industry drew a total of $1.14 billion in revenue, down 4 percent from the year before. Over half of that total came from software sales of $576 million, down 5 percent from January 2010. Overall video game hardware sales of $324 million were off 8 percent from the previous January. Video game accessories were the only subsegment to see year-over-year revenue growth, increasing 6 percent to $235.1 million for the month. In previous months this sector of the industry has been driven by strong interest in the PlayStation Move and Microsoft Kinect camera-based controllers. NPD no longer provides specific breakdowns for hardware or software or accessory unit sales to the press. Software Sales Rankings Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops was the best selling new retail title for the third month in a row in January, after selling over 12 million units across five separate platforms in 2010. Wii hit Just Dance 2 maintained its 2nd place position from December, outranking the combined sales of three different versions of EA's Dead Space 2, which debuted towards the end of the month and finished 3rd. Ubisoft had two other titles in the January top 10 -- Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, which fell from 4th to 7th place in January, and Michael Jackson: The Experience, which fell from 8th to 9th. Media Molecule's mid-January release LittleBigPlanet 2 finished in 4th place for the month, ahead of Majesco's 5th place exercise title Zumba Fitness: Join the Party. In early January, Majesco announced that title had shipped over 500,000 units to retail in just two months of availability. Harmonix's Dance Central became the first Kinect-exclusive title to rank in NPD's monthly top ten with an 8th place finish, while Sony's PS3 and PC MMO DC Universe Online snuck on to the list with a premiere in 10th place. New retail sales rankings from NPD for January 2010 were as follows: 1. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard) - Xbox 360, PS3, Wi, DS, PC 2. Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft) - Wii 3. Dead Space 2 (Electronic Arts) - Xbox 360, PS3, PC 4. Little Big Planet 2 (Sony) - PS3 5. Zumba Fitness: Join the Party (Majesco) - Wii, Xbox 360, PS3 6. NBA 2K11 (Take-Two Interactive) - Xbox 360, PS3, PSP, Wii, PS2, PC 7. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (Ubisoft) - Xbox 360, PS3 8. Dance Central (MTV Games) - Xbox 360 9. Michael Jackson The Experience (Ubisoft) - Wii, DS, PSP 10. DC Universe Online: The Next Legend Is You (Sony) - PS3, PC [UPDATE: Microsoft revealed sales of 381,000 Xbox 360 units in January, up 14.4 percent from the year before, making it the only console to show year-over-year growth for the month, according to the company. Consumers spent $551 million on Xbox 360 hardware, software and accessories in the month. Further leaks from the results show both Wii and PS3 sales falling in January and Black Ops selling 750,000 units for the month, as well as other tidbits]