September NPD: Madden, Gears, Dead Island are hits (Updated with Nintendo hardware numbers!)

by JC Fletcher on Oct 13th 2011 8:25PM

It should come as no surprise that Madden NFL 12 beat everything else in NPD's software chart for the month of September, unless you're really not into sports games and forgot it came out. Second place is also pretty expected, with the massive rollout of Gears of War 3 massively rolling into people's homes. Third place, however, is a bit more interesting -- Dead Island, from semi-obscure publisher Deep Silver, outsold almost everything else based on the strength of that trailer and the word "zombies." Find the top ten after the break.

In hardware, Microsoft reported Xbox 360 takes the top hardware spot once again, touting 438,000 units sold in the month. Nintendo reports sales of 360,000 3DS units in the five week September reporting period, as well as 240,000 Wiis and 145,000 DS systems. Sony has not released official sales numbers for the PS3 or PSP.

In larger trends, total industry sales are down 6 percent year over year, with a mere $1.16 billion changing hands in September.

Top 10 best-selling games (US) for September 2011:

Madden NFL 12 (360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP)
Gears of War 3 (360)
Dead Island (360, PS3, PC)
FIFA Soccer 12 (360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP, 3DS)
NHL 12 (360, PS3)
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (360, PS3, PC)
Resistance 3 (PS3)
Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (Wii, 360, NDS, PS3, 3DS, PSP, PC)
Call of Duty: Black Ops (360, PS3, NDS, Wii, PC)
Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine (360, PS3, PC)

Tags: 3ds, dead-island, ds, gears-of-war-3, madden-nfl-12, microsoft, nintendo, npd, npd-monthly, pc, playstation, ps3, wii, xbox

Reader Comments (66)

I give Madden 1-5 weeks to even be on that list and I give Fifa 2-7 months.

@GeraltRivia NPD is NA. It will be on a few weeks tops.

@Fire Walk With Me Oh well. That explains Madden being up there.

Oh wow I didn't know Deep Silver was behind Dead Island. Love Cursed Mountain. Just took a break from my second play thru a few minutes ago. That game still scares the crap out of me!

Jesus, Black Ops is still up there?

@Dizazter

And some people wonder why they still make COD games.

@Soiden

and thats why every single publisher and developer wants to be like that one....

the industry its going to that wrong path sadly

I've said this before, but I'm glad to see Resistance 3 up there. Easily my favourite in the series. Congrats to Insomniac, I can't wait to see what they do next.

@APCMice

I was gonna say the same thing! It is a little disappointing though, considering how much more time it had to sell over Gears 3, that Gears still sold a lot more copies. It's not surprising though.

@rhoadsie Not trying to troll, but it's usually expected that the better game sells more

@APCMice

I'm surprised and glad it made it there. A very fine effort and much more enjoyable than R2.

@trickybuz93

that's not true, because which game is truly "better" is subjective. it has nothing to do with how much it sells. for example, i enjoyed Space Marine and am stll enjoying it's multiplayer, and i think Black Ops is an overrated piece of garbage. therefore, Space Marine is the much better game.

@rhoadsie

When has the Resistance series ever outsold the Gears series? You shouldn't be surprised.

@APCMice
Can't wait to see Overstrike I take it?

I was expecting Gears to easily overtake Madden, suprising me

@papershadow
Reason is because Madden is on 5 systems, Gears 3 is on one.

Madden released Aug30th (had ENTIRE month of sales)
Gears released Sept20th (had 11 days of sales)

@MyAbsolution

Good points

@MyAbsolution

The fact that it came in second to a game on five systems is amazing though.

I haven't played it yet because I thought Gears 1 was boring, but for those who can appreciate it it's definitely a great series and the sales prove it.

@APCMice Gears 1 is probably the weakest game in the series.

@Faceless Troll

Yea I've heard two is better and I've been meaning to pick it up. Hopefully I'll get to that soon lol.

@APCMice
Well, Gears of War Triple Pack is just for you !!!

@Faceless Troll

That's crazy. Gears 2 was an unmitigated disaster to the point where Gears 1 MP rooms were still very crowded leading up to the Gears 3 release. Many people still consider Gears 1 the best in the series even with the brilliance of Gears 3 (which is also awesome).

Will there ever come a day when Lego games stop selling?

@That One Guy

Just paste the url.

So much for resistance 3 :-(

@jondastunna84 aye it outsold Black Ops!!*

* 2 months before the release of the next version

FIFA 12 was also released for PC, although I heard it requires Origin so nobody should buy it. As a hockey fan, it's disturbing that FIFA outsold NHL in the U.S. but that might have just been due to the number of platforms it came out on.

In a perfect world it would of been

1. Deus Ex: Human Revolution
2. Gears of War 3
3. Dead island (THIS GAME IS DAMN FUN! DAAAMN FUN!)
4. Resistance 3

@Faenix

In a perfect world, people would realize that it's "have" and not "of".

@Bubbameister33

In a perfect world, grammar nazis would realize noone cares about spelling on the internet but them.

@Faenix

In a perfect world, all good games would sell well and people wouldn't have to make comparisons such as this.

In a perfect world, I would have an ice cream sandwich right about now.

But I don't :(

So the world isn't perfect.

@Faenix

You do know his fixing your grammar, hence why you just called him a "grammar Nazi", but you still say only people like him care about spelling?

This world has a long way to go...

@Faenix In a perfect world all the perfect people would be perfect.

@Faenix
In a perfect world, I would still be eating WWF hulk Hogan ice cream bars on a summer afternoon.

@liquidsoap89 A good game is what each individual enjoys. I love playing Kinect sports boxing and track&field. Kinect Sports will never make the top 10 but I enjoy playing it. Does my enjoyment mean a perfect world is spoiled? My kids and I also love the lego games and I hope they make more because we find them fun. Is my family a drag on the perfect world because of what we enjoy?

I doubt I'll end up getting Dead Island this late in the game with everything else coming out, but it's good to see that it made bank. If all the kinks are worked out and they can build upon what they've got for a sequel I could see myself getting onboard

Dead Island is a really good game. Justin McElroy is a pretentious douche

His review isn't even the "lowest" out there, and he was perfectly fair IMO. The game is good, it just has a lot of flaws and difficult design choices that are hard to look past for most people. No need to be an ass because someone wrote a dissenting review of a video game you most likely had no hand in creating.

@ii Stryker

when you look at his profile picture there's no other words to describe him.

@Oddgirl when you look at the pedigree of the developer behind Dead Island and the fact that they have little to no experience in the open world RPG genre. Dead Island was no more flawed then anything Bethesda or Obsidian have made this gen. And he raves over those games.

I will say the best part of Dead Island WAS playing with my friends. I found the games balancing to be better with 3 friends helping. All too often i was quickly and easily overwhelmed when playing alone.

A 4 player co-op zombie melee rpg is worth 4 stars not 3

@Oddgirl

If there was anything wrong with it, it was the cheap deaths when faced with 5 running zombies coming at you at once (like in Moresby) that could all b1tch-slap you if you happened to miss the pacing on your sequence of swings. The key is to avoid those areas in the first place but the player would never know that without going through the area at least once.

@That One Guy
Modern Warfare 2 was still hanging out in Sept '10's NPD results, too: http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/NPD_September_2010

Dead Island sold because it's fun and had great word-of-mouth.

@MarkcusD

Fun, and addicting*

Wait... EA Sports still publishes PS2 games?

I wasn't really expecting to like Dead Island, because I'm kind of tired of the zombie trend, but its so deeply satisfying kick the zombies in the face and then break their limbs for bonus points.

Great to see Deus Ex doing well and Dead Island make a showing, some of my favorites this year for sure.

How did all the Madden versions combined sell more than the 2.5 million or so copies of Gears?

@ItsameMatt03 I hear football is popular?

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Madden NFL 12

September NPD: Madden, Gears, Dead Island are hits (Updated with Nintendo hardware numbers!)

Reader Comments (66)

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 6:48PM GeraltRivia said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 8:13PM Fire Walk With Me said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 9:52PM GeraltRivia said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 10:47PM Co said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 6:49PM Dizazter said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 9:08PM Soiden said

Posted: Oct 14th 2011 11:04AM eilegz said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 6:50PM APCMice said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:25PM rhoadsie said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:50PM trickybuz93 said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 8:16PM kentuckyfried said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 8:22PM Liquidfingers said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 9:18PM civilciv said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 10:36PM Nolan North said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 6:56PM papershadow said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 6:59PM MyAbsolution said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:10PM papershadow said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:53PM APCMice said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 8:08PM Faceless Troll said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 8:24PM APCMice said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 10:43PM Doms Beard said

Posted: Oct 14th 2011 2:01AM Vcize said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 6:56PM kilroy214 said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 6:58PM Bubbameister33 said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:03PM jondastunna84 said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:55PM Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:09PM Cranky Penguin said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:14PM Faenix said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:29PM Bubbameister33 said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:34PM Faenix said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:37PM liquidsoap89 said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 8:10PM Stevetrop Man of Mystery said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 10:01PM CatalysticGEAR said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 10:29PM The 7th Number said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 11:11PM Dance Mofo said

Posted: Oct 14th 2011 11:08AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:14PM Crayola Q Pants ESQ said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:16PM ii Stryker said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:24PM Oddgirl said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:31PM johnvonhugendong said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:51PM ii Stryker said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 8:26PM kentuckyfried said

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Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:27PM MarkcusD said

Posted: Oct 13th 2011 7:35PM Faenix said

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