NPD: Record Year for Industry Totals $17.94 Billion; Halo 3, Nintendo Consoles Dominate

Riding a wave of strong software releases and still-fresh hardware offerings, the North American console video game market grew a massive 43 percent in 2007, according to new numbers released today by the NPD Group.

Overall industry sales totaled a record $17.94 billion--compared to 2006's take of $12.53 billion--with software making up $8.64 billion of the pie. The highest-selling games list, which doesn't factor PC software sales into the mix, was unsurprisingly lead by Bungie's Halo 3, followed up by Nintendo's remote-including Wii Play.

The top ten software titles follow, listed in order of units sold:

1. Halo 3 (Bungie, Microsoft Game Studios, X360) - 4.82 million

2. Wii Play with Wii Remote (Nintendo, Wii) - 4.12 million

3. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Infinity Ward, Activision, X360) - 3.04 million

4. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Neversoft, Activision, PS2) - 2.72 million

5. Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo EAD Tokyo, Nintendo, Wii) - 2.52 million

6. Pokemon Diamond Version (Game Freak, Nintendo, NDS) - 2.48 million

7. Madden NFL 08 (EA Sports, Electronic Arts, PS2) - 1.90 million

8. Guitar Hero II (Harmonix, Activision, PS2) - 1.89 million

9. Assassin's Creed (Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft, X360) - 1.87 million

10. Mario Party 8 (Hudson Soft, Wii) - 1.82 million

Consoles hardware sales topped out at $5.12 billion, with Nintendo again leading the competition. The yearly numbers are as follows, with life-to-date totals shown in parentheses:

1. Nintendo DS: 8.5 million (17.65 million)

2. Wii: 6.29 million (7.38 million)

3. Xbox 360: 4.62 million (9.15 million)

4. PlayStation 2: 3.97 million (41.12 million)

5. PlayStation Portable: 3.82 million (10.47 million)

6. PlayStation 3: 2.56 million (3.25 million)