USA Retail Sales Preview - October 2009
by Brett Walton, posted on 11 November 2009 / 4,127 Views
Despite a number of large releases in October, we expect total revenues to be down around 10% year-on-year, due mainly to reduced average selling prices of many hardware and software SKUs, stronger overall hardware performance last year and big releases this year not performing as well as last October (Fable II, Fallout 3, Saints Row 2 etc).
Monthly highlights:
- 25 titles have sold over 100,000 units
- Total sales for the top ten titles comes in at around 3.5m units
- Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was the top selling software with 570,000 units sold
- Wii Fit Plus came in at number two with over 460,000 units sold
- Borderlands sold over 370,000 units across Xbox360 and PS3
- Halo 3: ODST sold a further 275,000 units taking total sales to over 2 million
VGChartz expects the top 30 software for October to be:
| Pos | Game | Platform | Publisher | Sales |
| 1 | Uncharted 2: Among Thieves | PS3 | Sony Computer Entertainment | 570,646 |
| 2 | Wii Fit Plus | Wii | Nintendo | 460,560 |
| 3 | Wii Sports Resort | Wii | Nintendo | 352,848 |
| 4 | Borderlands | X360 | 2K Games | 288,342 |
| 5 | Halo 3: ODST | X360 | Microsoft | 274,402 |
| 6 | Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days | DS | Square Enix | 249,891 |
| 7 | NBA 2K10 | X360 | 2K Sports | 224,581 |
| 8 | Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games | Wii | Sega | 224,325 |
| 9 | Forza Motorsport 3 | X360 | Microsoft | 211,974 |
| 10 | Mario Kart Wii | Wii | Nintendo | 208,875 |
| 11 | Demon's Soul | PS3 | Atlus | 176,178 |
| 12 | Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising | X360 | Codemasters | 172,116 |
| 13 | Brutal Legend | X360 | Electronic Arts | 169,507 |
| 14 | NBA 2K10 | PS3 | 2K Sports | 166,374 |
| 15 | Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games | DS | Sega | 122,774 |
| 16 | Smackdown vs RAW 2010 | X360 | THQ | 121,569 |
| 17 | Mario & Luigi 3 | DS | Nintendo | 117,394 |
| 18 | Madden NFL 10 | X360 | EA Sports | 111,434 |
| 19 | Bakugan: Battle Brawlers | DS | Activision | 106,553 |
| 20 | Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky | DS | Nintendo | 106,005 |
| 21 | Brutal Legend | PS3 | Electronic Arts | 101,901 |
| 22 | Madden NFL 10 | PS3 | EA Sports | 99,565 |
| 23 | The Beatles | Wii | MTV Games | 95,940 |
| 24 | Smackdown vs RAW 2010 | PS3 | THQ | 95,314 |
| 25 | Wii Play | Wii | Nintendo | 92,481 |
| 26 | Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time | PS3 | Sony Computer Entertainment | 85,428 |
| 27 | Smackdown vs RAW 2010 | PS2 | THQ | 84,228 |
| 28 | Tekken 6 | PS3 | Namco Bandai | 84,082 |
| 29 | NBA Live 10 | X360 | EA Sports | 83,580 |
| 30 | Borderlands | PS3 | 2K Games | 83,045 |
Moving on to hardware and the only console up this month is Wii with an impressive 62% month-on-month increase. This is mainly down to the fact that the price cut happened right at the end of September so October was the first full month of sales at the $199 price point. With September being a five week month and October four, sales would normally be expected to be down 20% across the board just due to one less week. PSP shows a smaller drop due to the PSP Go launch right at the end of September and PS3 / DS show larger drops indicating a slight slowing of sales compared to last month.
Year-on-year, PS3 remains the only console to show an increase - up 52%. Wii, DS and Xbox 360 are only around 10% down on last year whereas PSP and PS2 are closer to 30% down.
