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.

Nick Breckon

January 17, 2008 5:01 PM

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:

Halo 3 (Bungie, Microsoft Game Studios, X360) - 4.82 million
Wii Play with Wii Remote (Nintendo, Wii) - 4.12 million
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Infinity Ward, Activision, X360) - 3.04 million
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Neversoft, Activision, PS2) - 2.72 million
Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo EAD Tokyo, Nintendo, Wii) - 2.52 million
Pokemon Diamond Version (Game Freak, Nintendo, NDS) - 2.48 million
Madden NFL 08 (EA Sports, Electronic Arts, PS2) - 1.90 million
Guitar Hero II (Harmonix, Activision, PS2) - 1.89 million
Assassin's Creed (Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft, X360) - 1.87 million
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:

Nintendo DS: 8.5 million (17.65 million)
Wii: 6.29 million (7.38 million)
Xbox 360: 4.62 million (9.15 million)
PlayStation 2: 3.97 million (41.12 million)
PlayStation Portable: 3.82 million (10.47 million)
PlayStation 3: 2.56 million (3.25 million)

Nick Breckon

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OmegaRed59

 reply
January 17, 2008 5:10 PM

Assassin's Creed is pretty much the only surprise for me. I will have to give it a shot if it comes out on PC or if I get a xbox 360.
- rustified
  
   reply
  January 17, 2008 5:26 PM
  
  It was very heavily marketed for a video game, and the marketing was mostly good. The rumored PC specs are quite high, however, so a 360 version might be your best bet.
  - wendigo
    
     reply
    January 17, 2008 6:59 PM
    
    Woe is the man who buys ass creed instead of renting it. It's hard to imagine a game with lower replay value.
- Gwyndion
  
   reply
  January 17, 2008 7:28 PM
  
  I actually loved Assassin's Creed... it's a lot of fun... but it still blows me away how much it sold. It is a really good game, but I didn't think it had such a broad appeal.