Dragon Quest IX, Wii Sports Resort Top Q3 2009 Sales

Market research groups NPD, GfK Chart-Track and Enterbrain have once again put their heads together to combine quarterly sales from the world's three biggest markets--the UK, Japan and the USA--and chart the best-selling games from July to September.

1. Dragon Quest IX (DS / Level-5) - 3.92M

   (3.92M Japan, not yet released in US or UK)

2. Wii Sports Resort (Wii / Nintendo) - 3.01M

   (1.7M US, 465K UK, 841K Japan)

3. Madden NFL 10 (Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, Wii, PSP / EA Tiburon) - 2.61M

   (2.58M US, 39K UK, not yet released in Japan)

4. Pokemon HeartGold & SoulSilver (DS / Nintendo) - 2.06M

   (2.06M Japan, not yet released in US or UK)

5. Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360 / Bungie) - 1.84M

   (1.52M US, 294K UK, 33K Japan)

The groups found a 6% decline in total software unit sales across all three markets in comparison with the same period from last year, with poor sales in the United States and UK nullifying a period of growth in the Japanese market.

Overall sales dropped 9% in the United States compared to the third quarter of 2008, broken down as an 8% drop in console sales and 14% for portables. The UK saw a decline of a whopping 19% thanks to a 12% drop in console sales and 34% in portable.

Japan, on the other hand, experienced a unit sales increase of 15% in comparison to Q3 2008--when sales had been down 15% compared to Q3 2007.

2009 has so far been less successful than 2008 for all territories though, with year-to-date unit sales down by 9% in Japan, 8% in the US and 13% in the UK.