I’ve been following NPD Sales charts for ages now, and it was always interesting to see how long can a title hold on them. Blizzard and EA/Maxis are long standing legends – in the past eight years, there haven’t been a weekly or monthly sales chart where at least one title from these companies didn’t occupy spot or two.
NPD Group decided to combine their weekly charts into monthly ones, probably for easier tracking – and making annual reports will be much more easier. But getting back on the subject, sales results for North America are quite interesting:
Top 5 PC Games for September 2008
1. Spore / EA Maxis / $50
2. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning / EA Mythic / $49
3. The Sims 2 Apartment Life Expansion Pack / EA Maxis / $30
4. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Collector’s Edition / EA Mythic / $80
5. Spore Galactic Edition / EA Maxis / $79
As you can see even titles such as Crysis Warhead (#12) and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky (#25) didn’t make it into top 5. However, I congratulate to Ukranian team for delivering an excellent game.
What makes gaming sales so interesting is a look on overall software chart, where Spore and Warhammer Online made a major upset, beating AntiVirus and Office suites.
Overall Top 5 for September 2008
1. Spore / EA Maxis / $50 (Average)
2. MS Office 2007 Home & Student 3User / Microsoft / $125 (Average)
3. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning / EA Mythic / $49 (Average)
4. Trend Micro AntiVirus 2008 Plus Anti-Spyware / Trend Micro/ $24 (Average)
5. Spy Sweeper / Webroot / $21 (Average)
Yes, Spore kicked MS Office Home & Student license from the top spot, which is very significant – August and September sales are dominated by “back to school” period – meaning people prefer playing games than working. No wonder there 😉
We only wonder how much time NPD will spend to finally start tracking online game sales… that would be a major contributor to the actual fact sheet – as we all know, games are selling online like hotcakes, while PC retailers are lagging behind. And yet, in the “lagging behind” segment, Spore and Warhammer beat favorites in sales.
Once more, these stats are for North America only (received some comments in the past about WW rankings, had to clarify).
