Video Game Sales Deal NBA 2K11 A Slam Dunk While Bethesda Wins Big With Fallout New Vegas

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Posted November 16, 2010 - By Eric Eckstein

NBA 2K11 Preview

NBA 2K11 and Fallout: New Vegas owned the number one and number two spots last month, as the NPD Group released their monthly report on sales data for October. While the group no longer releases figures for the top consoles and games, there is some interesting information to glean from the report in regards to the apparent success of PlayStation Move, and more importantly what made the Top 10 list and what didn't.

First off, the games:

Video Game Software Sales, October 2010

NBA 2K11 (360, PS3, PS2, PSP, WII, PC), Take 2 Interactive
Fallout New Vegas (360, PS3, PC), Bethesda Softworks
Medal of Honor (360, PS3, PC), Electronic Arts
Fable 3 (360), Microsoft
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 (360, PS3, WII, PC, NDS), Lucasarts
Halo: Reach (360), Microsoft
Just Dance 2 (WII), Ubisoft
FIFA Soccer 11 (PS3, 360, WII, PS2, PSP, NDS, PC), Electronic Arts
Madden NFL 11 (360, PS3, WII, PS2, PSP), Electronic Arts
WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 (PS3, 360, PS2, WII, PSP), THQ

What's most interesting about this breakdown is that, according NPD Analyst Anita Frazier, "At the SKU level, the best-selling game was Fallout: New Vegas from Bethesda on the Xbox 360 platform with sales of about 679K units, including the collector's edition." So one platform for Fallout: New Vegas rings in at almost 700,000 units, and NBA 2K11 is still on top. It seems as if the demise of NBA Elite 11 has given a huge boost to the power of NBA 2K11, and we're sure it being an amazing game has everything to do with it selling like hot cakes. Additionally, Microsoft shared some sales data around their titles, with Fable 3 selling 580K versus Halo: Reach's 315K for the month of October.

Also notable was this statement: "Many are interested in how Rock Band 3 fared. Rock Band 3 was the 15th best selling game at the title level (across platforms) for the month of October. Note that this title was launched on Oct. 26, which only represents a few days in our October sales data. Based on solid reviews, this game has the potential to perform well over the holidays."

Why Frazier calls out Rock Band 3 is noteworthy, because Activision's Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock was a no show on September's NPD results, and still has no presence on the October chart. How the title perfomed is a mystery, but that it never graced the Top 10 speaks again to the continued oversaturation of music games on the market (neither DJ Hero 2 nor Def Jam Rapstar broke into the top 10 either).

Also notably absent are titles like Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Vanquish and a personal favorite 'round these parts, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. If Rock Band 3 is 15th, and #6 clocks in at approx. 300K units, that can't fair too well for games outside of the initial 10, much less these games.

Hardware sales also remain a closely-guarded secret, and as it's next to impossible to decipher who is beating whom (which we know ultimately is what you want, you fanboys), I'll let Anita Frazier walk us through the details:

"The best-selling hardware system for the month was the Nintendo DS, while the Xbox 360 was the only platform to realize unit sales improvement over last October...While the PS3 overall did not experience an increase from September to October, the PS3 bundle with Move experienced a 15 percent increase over September 2010...The Xbox 360 has generated the most unit sales among the console platforms on a year-to-date basis as of this month. The Nintendo DS remains the best-selling hardware system, overall."

So it seems the Nintendo DS is still upfront, which it will be until the end of time, and considering Xbox 360 owned the top spot in September, it's likely that it has retained that advantage in October, despite the PS3's increase due to its continued success with moving Move bundles. In fact, Microsoft has announced that it sold 325K Xbox 360s in October, leading video game consoles in sales for the fifth consecutive month. Across the board, sales were down 4 percent, but to be clear, the NPD group only measures about 70 percent of retail traffic as they do not account for "revenues being generated from digital distribution, used game sales, rentals, social network games and mobile applications to name a few."

We expect to hear some crowing from the big three shortly, so we'll be sure to update you accordingly as they share more info on their crop of games.

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Tags: Nintendo DS, NPD Analysis, PC Gaming, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Move, PlayStation Portable, Videogames, Wii, Xbox 360

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m.lucero89

fps are my favorite type of game. i play airsoft so i get my favorite guns from www.airsplat.com and play shooters when i get home still hyped!

Posted: October 13, 2011 10:31 AM
MarioSal

I love playing first person shooter games because I get to use the models of my favorite airsoft guns. Not the same as the real thing, but just as good on a rainy day, or 3 in the morning when the neighbors are asleep. I go to this link because I can find airsoft copies of the guns from my favorite games: http://www.airsplat.com/airsof t-video-games.htm.

Posted: September 9, 2011 11:22 AM
slimshady999

2011 is good game not 3 out of 5 but 4.5 out of 5

Posted: February 28, 2011 7:06 PM
slimshady999

2011 is good game not 3 out of 5 but 4.5 out of 5

Posted: February 28, 2011 7:00 PM
Barfly

Bethe$da win$, yeah and the gamers lose. As usual, with Fallout; they have a 1st rate story story and 3rd rate code writers. Hire real gaming programmers you hacks!

Posted: November 25, 2010 6:15 AM
TheMadDragonV

Yeah it's great that FNV is selling very well, but when will we see more patches for all these glitches?!
I don't usually buy a game when it first comes out, but I had to have FNV since Fallout3 was such an amazing game. But since playing FNV, I'll never buy a game brand new ever again. And with only 1 patch that didn't fix anything in my game, except make the glitches worse, I think Bethesda/Obsidian really let the gaming community down big time on this one. And showed their true colors of being just another company trying to rake in the cash by any means necessary.

Posted: November 18, 2010 12:42 PM
RPG-fan

Can't believe that Force Unleashed 2 is on top 5. It's 5 hours long, unfinished and hardly any improvements from the original, yet it sells like hotcakes. Proves that Star Wars fans will buy anything that has a SW logo on it.

Posted: November 17, 2010 8:18 PM
CujoSWAoA

Go 2k sports! KILL EA SPORTS! WOOOO!

Posted: November 17, 2010 12:27 PM
NinjaCrisis

Okay, why don't we show individual numbers for the games?
G4 better not be doing that fanboy favoritism >.>.....not showing numbers for anything but the 360 but just making mere mention of other consoles. Maybe I wanna know how many DS units sold, yah, forgot to mention that didn'tcha? Fanboyism....

Posted: November 17, 2010 8:03 AM
MasterOfWeed

I love how Black Ops sold more than all of these games combined and the release month isn't even over yet, On the 2nd day after it was released there was at one point a little bit over 3 MILLION people online at once just on the xbox my jaw dropped when I saw the number of people online.

Posted: November 17, 2010 3:04 AM
Adampro123

No shocker really with no other competition for a real basketball game of course NBA 2k11 is goin to do great. on top of that most reviews were really high for it and when it was annouced NBA elite got cancelled im sure even more people went out and bough NBA 2k11. and then of course it came out early in the month so that helped too.

Posted: November 16, 2010 11:35 PM
RPG-fan

Alright, New Vegas beat Fable III! Though it did help that NV is multiplatform. Still, it's a win for hardcore RPG gamers than "more like action/adventure than real RPG" aka RPG-lite game like Fable III.

Posted: November 16, 2010 10:22 PM
mrnyo

and the DS still strong after so many years... nintendo sure is the king of handheld gaming, no matter how much shovelware there is

Posted: November 16, 2010 7:36 PM
Linsanity017

WTF happened to Third ? Medal Of Honor ring a belll

Posted: November 16, 2010 7:13 PM
GatsuBlackSword

2K11 out sold Fallout; New Vegas?

Posted: November 16, 2010 6:05 PM
dz99ls

NPD is a joke anymore

Posted: November 16, 2010 5:54 PM
gamermoney

@:lucid point being fanvoyism? lol

Posted: November 16, 2010 5:27 PM
nvserg

congrats Microsoft,

just wondering though, how is the Move sales doing. its been out more then 10 days and we have not heard anything about numbers?????? =O)

Posted: November 16, 2010 5:27 PM
lucidity

Looks like the 360 has had it's 10 straight victory over the PS3 this year, two more months and like this and Sony will be skunked for 2010 in NA.
Most impressive is the fact that even with all the software sales lumped together from all the platforms, the 360 exclusives still shine through.

360 sales in the UK have also been ahead of the PS3 but have just doubled with Kinect.

http://www.eurogamer.net/art icles/2010-11-16-kinect-double s-uk-xbox-sales

Posted: November 16, 2010 4:56 PM