October U.S. Sales Show GTA, SOCOM III Strength

According to the latest U.S. video game sales figures for October 2005, the industry produced $365 million in total sales for the month, a figure that's down almost 25% on the previous year's figure, in a month that saw Sony's SOCOM 3 for PlayStation 2, EA's NBA Live 2006 for PS2, and Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for PSP leading the best-selling games. Diversity of best-sellers was again a problem - the previous month's sales saw just seven games selling more than 100,000 units compared to twenty in September 2004, and October was not much better, with eight games topping 100,000 during the month, compared to a much more significant twenty last year. Game analysts suggest that this may see a market that's slowing in anticipation of the advent of next-gen consoles, but also reflects an exceptional 2004 year, in which titles such as the gigantic-selling Grand Theft: San Andreas, with the Pokemon GBA titles and Fable still high in the charts. Though Electronic Arts again provided many of the top titles, including positive showings for Madden NFL 2006 and NBA Live 2006 on multiple formats, other publishers had excellent showings, with Ubisoft's Far Cry Instincts topping the Xbox single-format chart, and Nintendo's Pokemon XD again dominating the sleepy GameCube market, with Konami's Castlevania: Dawn Of Sorrow leading DS sales, albeit at a level below PSP titles such as GTA: LCS. Finally, although 2004's holiday season was exceptional, the figures reveal that a year-to-date sum of $3.73 billion in total game sales for North America is still marginally up on last year's total until now, arguably leaving no major cause for alarm.