October NPD: Uncharted 2 takes top spot while hardware sales slow down

After the last two months of price drop-fueled sales surges, it's almost comforting to see all these red arrows. Hardware sales are down 17% from last month and down 10% from the year prior, with only the Wii maintaining any upward momentum as we head into the two busiest shopping months of the year. The PS3 lost the highest percentage, but that's hardly surprising following last month's meteoric 134% spike in sales.

On the software side of things, the exceptionally well-received PlayStation 3-exclusive Uncharted 2: Among Thieves took top honors, selling 537K units in just the second half of October. Of course, Sony told us earlier today that the title has broken the coveted million mark (worldwide?) with November sales factored in. The multiplatform Borderlands makes a similarly impressive showing, taking third on Xbox 360 with 418K units sold; however, when you factor in the 113K units sold of the not-top-ten PS3 version (data provided graciously by NPD), you find an impressive 531K in cumulative sales, just missing the top spot.

NBA 2K10 had a strong showing with 524K in cumulative sales, "outselling last year's NBA 2K9 by 60% in its launch month" reports the NPD, while last month's champ, Halo 3: ODST, dropped to sixth with 271K in sales. With just four days on shelves in October, Forza Motorsport 3 made a strong showing at #8 with 175K. Slightly less strong was Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days' ninth-place showing despite a full month on the shelf. And in last place is the worldwide phenomenon known as FIFA 10 (or, in North America, FIFA Soccer 10). While FIFA 10 may be the "fastest selling sports game ever" in Europe, selling 1.7m in its first week, over here we bought up just 156K copies in a little over a week.

-Wii: 507K

44K (+10%)
-DS: 458K

66K (-13%)
-PS3: 321K

171K (-35%)
-360: 250K

103K (-29%)
-PSP: 175K

15K (-8%)
-PS2: 118K

28K (-19%)

Check out the software sales chart after the break.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - PS3 - Sony - 537K
Wii Fit Plus - Wii - Nintendo - 441K
Borderlands - 360 - Take 2 - 418K
Wii Sports Resort - Wii - Nintendo - 314K
NBA 2K10 - 360 - Take 2 - 311K
Halo 3: ODST - 360 - Microsoft - 271K
NBA 2K10 - PS3 - Take 2 - 213K
Forza Motorsport 3 - 360 - Microsoft - 175K
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days - DS - Square Enix - 169K
FIFA Soccer 10 - 360 - EA - 156K

Reader Comments (162)

Microsoft sales could go up by almost a million units this month just by replacing modded bricks.

My bad..wrong post...dang windows.^_^

You know there are 3 levels of fanboyism, 1. Direct- when you simply hate the other console for some idiotic reasons. 2. Hidden- (most popular on joystiq) when you say you like both consoles but you still bash the living heck out of the other... but still claim you love both. and 3. Moronic- (pretty rare but happens) When you have no idea what you are talking about, but bash some console, then change your mind and bash the other. Now, I had to get in here because you guys are just pathetic, get this through your thick fanboy heads, SOME people like the playstation, SOME like the 360... NO NEED TO GET INTO A WAR BECAUSE OF IT. How in the world does this benefit you by calling others fanboys and bashing the opposite console. How about getting a job? Or a significant other? Without the two consoles (3 with wii) We would not have the competition between the companies thus we would have one bad system! Peoples preference is not bad, but when you turn it into faboyism, you are only embarrassing your self. I for one enjoy my ps3 more than my 360 for my personal reasons, and I dont care if it out sold the xbox this month, and I dont care if the xbox out sold the ps3 for months! But all of you sad little smurfs do!? Your life must have problems in it because all you do here is nit pick every issue just to get an argument. STOP, its really annoying now. If you like both trully, good for you, if you like xbox - good for you, if you like wii - Great! Just shut up with the retarded nonsence you are all doing here, you are not hiding your sad fanboyism within your comments, its all clear!

Type more it'll make you right

One of the leaks said that Chinatown Wars PSP sold under 10k for the month. Even if PSN sales were 2x this, it's still pretty low for a GTA game.

So does that mean that the DS version actually overperformed by crossing 100k, and if it's not a 3D open-world GTA it's a nonfactor?

Well we know that 360 will come out on top in hardware this month after they broke a million consoles with that anti-pirate signal.

Is that what nintendo was trying to do with that anti-pirate firmware that bricked innocent wiis: boost console sales?

Ah...NPD's always bring out Console cheerleaders out. SPOILER ALERT: Nintendo won the console wars this gen get over it.

It would be interesting to see total net profit instead of just assuming they're in the lead because of console sales. Sure they probably do lead overall, but their overall game sales are much much worse than the 360 and ps3. Sure they have some games, like Mario Kart, that sell better than Halo, but there aren't very many of them. Most of their games don't sell very well at all. Anyway, I doubt their lead is as large as most people believe it is. Game sales make up a very large part of a consoles net profits nowadays.

nice

Sony doing really good.

Why does everyone look at these numbers and forget that they only take into account US sales. Not to sound fanboyish, although admittedly I like the ps3 much more, but if the ps3 is dominating the 360 in America, it's killing it in Europe and Japan. You can bet that the ps3 sold over 600k units worldwide. The 360 probably sold around 400k. The 360 has a much larger userbase over the PS3 in the US than it does in the rest of the world. You can't expect the PS3 to compete in game sales in America with the 360 yet. Don't forget the 360 has a full year over the PS3 in the development cycle.

Given that exclusives look better for the PS3 and have about 3 times the content and depth for the PS3 over 360 exclusives Microsoft is going looking at trouble in the next few years. They pretty much have to ditch the Arcade to compete with Sony. Why? Because not having a HD limits development possibilities for game companies. They either have to reproduce the engine/common textures/common sounds on every DVD ROM for that game or keep the game under 9 GB. Most developers opt to keep the games under 9 GB. This compresses audio/visuals/game length. The Arcade was a very very bad idea. Sure it sold more consoles in the short run, but it's gonna get really bad pretty quickly from here on. I'm guessing we'll see games with additional content that can't be run on the Arcade at first followed by games that require a 360 with a hard drive. Or MS can just give up and let Sony win. Either way.

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October NPD: Uncharted 2 takes top spot while hardware sales slow down

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