Sony has been left to pick up the crumbs after Nintendo and Microsoft carved up the U.S gaming software market in January.
The NPD Group who track software sales for gaming consoles has released the top 10 software sales list for January. Nintendo sold the most by a wide margin, with the No. 1 game, Wii Fit, selling 777,000 units despite the higher price of US$90. The second best-selling game after that was the Wii Play and Wii Remote bundle, which sold 415,000 units.
According to Red Herring, Of the top 10, six of them were for Nintendo consoles (with five of the games Nintendo exclusives), and the remaining four titles were Xbox 360 games.
While the Xbox 360 games were also available on the PS3, the significantly better sales on the Xbox 360 show Microsoft’s influence in the U.S.
In terms of hardware, Nintendo dominated charts once again with its Wii and DS consoles selling 679,200 and 510,800 units, respectively.
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 came in third with 309,000 consoles shipped. Sony trailed with 203,200 consoles shipped.
Sony may see sales spike up with the release of Killzone 2, the highly anticipated PS3 exclusive that’s set to hit retail at the end of the month.
In response to the poor numbers Sony says global sales of its PlayStation handheld game console have topped 50 million units.
The PlayStation Portable, known as PSP, debuted in Japan in December 2004. It hit markets in the U.S., Asia and Europe in 2005.
The company’s video game unit, Sony Computer Entertainment, announced the sales in a statement Friday. Nintendo said the Kyoto-based company has sold 96.2 million DS and its latest version DSi consoles since December, 2004.
