NPD 2010 Results - Top Ten Games for Each Platform

The year of 2010 was a wacky and wild one. That goes for sales, too, y'know! Courtesy of the NPD Group, the top ten best-selling games for each platform were unveiled on this day. I'd like to share my own insight on each platform starting with the Wii and ending with the handhelds.


Here we see that once again, third parties just do not sell on Wii. Oh, wait. Actually, without the snark and sarcasm, over half of the best-sellers for Wii are from third-parties. You have casual experiences like Just Dance 2, Michael Jackson: The Experience, Wipeout: The Game, and Wii Party (which sold about a half-million), and you have your more substance-filled titles such as the GotY 2010, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Disney Epic Mickey, uDraw Studio, Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4, and Call of Duty: Black Ops which is surprisingly near or has reached one million sales.


An interesting list compared to the Wii's mix of casual and hardcore experiences, Call of Duty: Black Ops reigns supreme at the top of the list followed by annual favorite, Madden NFL 11. God of War III, Red Dead Redemption, and Final Fantasy XIII show that traditional experiences are still favored despite Sony's plans to dive in on Nintendo's casual-friendly Wii with the Move peripheral. Not too much that's exciting on this chart, but it's good to know that both first and third party software has a home on the PS3.


Looking like deja vu, Black Ops hits the number one spot followed by the ever-popular, Halo Reach. Madden NFL 11 takes the third spot followed by Red Dead Redemption. The 360 managed to squeeze out a victory over every third party game on the PS3 save for Final Fantasy XIII and, surprisingly, NBA 2K11. Even with eleven months as an advantage, Mass Effect 2 was outsold by the Metacritic-inferior Fable III. Also of note is that no Kinect software hit the charts.


Nintendo dominated their DS platform with a handful of third-party software making the list including the improved Super Scribblenauts, Toy Story 3, LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4, Zhu Zhu Pets, and Sonic Colors (which combined with the Wii version have shipped two million copies). Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies shows that the franchise can work well on handhelds and wonderfully so.


I do not care how many hardware units the PSP has sold. It's software sales are a failure making the PSP, in my eyes, a failure as well. You have to wonder when your top game sells only 300,000 units what the problem is. How can Sony get third parties on-board with the PSP NGP with higher dev costs and the potential for lesser sales? Especially when its main competition has an eight month lead on it? Regardless, it's sad to see such titles fail so badly. Ghost of Sparta performed well below expectations, and that's the theme with PSP software for the year. 2011 isn't looking any better.

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The results have been analyzed to death, so now it's your turn. What surprises you on the top ten best-selling games for each platform? Anything come out at you? Let me know in the comments section.