U.S. November Sales Highlight Halo 2, GTA: San Andreas

Several industry analysts are now discussing the new U.S. game sales charts for November, for which concrete results have just debuted. In particular, observers such as Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter are singling out the success of Halo 2 for the month - perhaps no surprise, but the scale of its victory is still shocking. Combined sales of the standard and limited edition version of the game came to well over 3 million copies, easily dislodging GTA: San Andreas from the top spot, since Rockstar's title sold through around one and a half million copies in its second month. Halo 2’s success is unparalleled by all but the largest Japanese releases, such as Dragon Quest, and makes it easily the most successful Xbox of all time. However, PlayStation 2 software sales are being affected by the shortage of new hardware - even though PlayStation 2 titles dominate the rest of the chart. In fact, there are only two other Xbox titles in the whole top twenty (with Ghost Recon 2 at number twenty). The GameCube’s highest entry is Metroid Prime 2, with somewhat disappointing sales figures. Nintendo also only has two other titles in the top twenty, Paper Mario and Mario Power Tennis. Sales for the lower-placed titles are also significantly down from Halo 2 and the new Grand Theft Auto, with Need for Speed: Underground 2 selling around a third of San Andreas' November total, and Ghost Recon 2 much less than that. In hardware sales, the Game Boy Advance has once again dominated, topping one million sales, followed by the Xbox, the PlayStation, the Nintendo DS showing just under half a million units sold, with the GameCube below that still.