NPD: Wii, Call Of Duty 4 Top December Charts

The NPD group has released U.S. game biz sales figures for December 2007, with the Wii and DS dominating hardware numbers, and game sales for the last month of 2007 topped by Activision's Call of Duty 4 and Nintendo's Super Mario Galaxy. Overall, the entire video game market -- both hardware and software -- accounted for $4.82 billion in December, up 28% over to the year previous. December Hardware Hardware numbers were up 17% to $1.83 billion, with the DS easily outselling all other console and handheld platforms. The Wii carried a relatively thin lead over the Xbox 360, which also moved over a million and a quarter units during the month. The PlayStation 3 was the only console not to break the million mark for the month. The full charts are as follows: Nintendo DS - 2.47 million (from 1.53m) Wii - 1.35 million (from 981K) Xbox 360 - 1.26 million (from 770K) PlayStation 2 - 1.1 million (from 496K) PSP - 1.06 million (from 567K) PlayStation 3 - 798K (from 466K) "Both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 realized strong month-over-month hardware sales increases," commented Frazier. "The 360 in particular seems to have benefited from a killer slate of hardware acquisition driving content including COD4, Assassin's Creed and Halo 3." December Software On the software side, December sales were up 36% to $2.37 billion, with Activision's Call of Duty 4 and Nintendo's Super Mario Galaxy again besting the rest, followed by the PlayStation 2 version of Guitar Hero III, Wii Play, and Assassin's Creed. The full rundown is as follows: 1. Call of Duty 4 (Xbox 360, Activision) - 1.47 million 2. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii, Nintendo) - 1.40 million 3. Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock w/guitar (PlayStation 2, Neversoft/Budcat/Activision) 1.25 million 4. Wii Play w/remote (Wii, Nintendo) - 1.08 million 5. Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360, Ubisoft) - 894k 6. Halo 3 (Xbox 360, Microsoft) - 743k 7. Brain Age 2 (DS, Nintendo) - 660k 8. Madden NFL 08 (PS2, Electronic Arts) - 655k 9. Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock w/guitar (Xbox 360, Neversoft/Activision) - 625k 10. Mario and Sonic: Olympic Games (Wii, Sega) - 613k Alongside the December releases, the NPD also debuted yearly totals for the U.S. game hardware and software industry, showing impressive results.