April NPD Sales: Wii Fit, Nintendo DS Top Slow Month

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Lacking the monster sales of last April's Grand Theft Auto 4, the NPD charts for April 2009 mark a fairly uneventful period in North American videogame sales.

Wii Fit lead the software pile with 471,000 units sold, with Pokemon Platinum followed up closely with 433,000 units. EA's newcomer The Godfather II captured two slots on the list for over 200,000 combined sales, while Guitar Hero Aerosmith unbelievably beat out Guitar Hero Metallica in its debut month.

"The big story for the month is the performance of portable game hardware sales as propelled by the release of Nintendo's DSi," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier of the system's 1.04 million sales. "The NDS platform accounted for 31 percent of total industry unit sales this month across all categories."

April's best-selling software:

  1. Wii Fit w/Balance Board (Nintendo, Wii) - 471,000 units
  2. Pokemon Platinum Version (Nintendo, NDS) - 433,000
  3. Mario Kart w/Wheel (Nintendo, Wii) - 210,000
  4. Wii Play w/Remote (Nintendo, Wii) - 170,000
  5. The Godfather II (EA Redwood Shores, 360) - 155,000
  6. Resident Evil 5 (Capcom, 360) - 122,000
  7. New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, NDS) - 119,000
  8. Mario Kart DS (Nintendo, NDS) - 112,000
  9. Guitar Hero Aerosmith (Neversoft, 360) - 110,000
  10. The Godfather II (EA Redwood Shores, PS3) - 91,000

And the hardware numbers:

  1. Nintendo DS - 1,040,000 units
  2. Wii - 340,000 units
  3. Xbox 360 - 175,000 units
  4. PlayStation 3 - 127,000 units
  5. PSP - 116,000 units
  6. PlayStation 2 - 172,000 units
Update: NPD has clarified to Shacknews that the Xbox 360 rendition of Guitar Hero Aerosmith did indeed outsell the 360 release of Guitar Hero Metallica due to the various sales and discounts on Aerosmith upon Metallica's release.

However, when the sales figures for the various versions of the games are combined, Metallica came in as April's third best-selling title, with Aerosmith at number four.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    May 14, 2009 4:11 PM

    It's amazing how old all but three games on the best-selling games list are. It's actually kind of disheartening.

    • reply
      May 15, 2009 4:04 AM

      its worse to see the PC top 20 each week. WOW & Sims for as long as I can remember. Atleast the games in the console market change below the top 3

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