Numbers of console and games sales were released by the NPD group for the month of January 2010 today with some not so surprising results. The Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS (including the DSi SKU’s) lead the console war as they continue to dominate this generation in terms of sales. Even after their record setting Wii sales in December, the little white box with waggle controls still is flying off shelves. With that comes five of the top games being Wii titles.

The griefer’s paradise New Super Mario Bros Wii tops their charts, follwed by evergreen favorite Wii titles like Wii Fitt Plus, Mario Kart Wii and Wii Sports Resort. The only surprise on the Wii comes from the critically panned Just Dance from Ubisoft (averaging a score of 47 from Metacritic).

XBox 360 surged back in front of the PlayStation 3, no doubt with some help of their over half a million selling release of Mass Effect 2. The XBox 360’s version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 also outsold the PS3 version by a firm 65,000 units. Co-op shooter Army of Two: The 40th Day debutted on the charts in the number 8 spot, followed by the apocalyptic release of Darksiders, both the games being the XBox 360 versions.

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Late last week, the NPD Group who is in charge of tracking, compiling and interpreting sales numbers for the video game industry released their console and game sales figures for the month of October with some surprising results. These numbers do not include Walmart sales or digital distribution of games. Let’s take a look.

Console Sales

1. Nintendo Wii: 506,900 (up from 462,800)

2. Nintendo DS: 457,600 (down from 524,200, includes all Nintendo DS SKU’s and Nintendo DSi)

3. Playstation 3: 320,600 (down from 491,800)

4. XBox 360: 249,700 (down from 352,600)

5. PSP: 174,600 (up from 146,000, includes all PSP SKU’s and PSP Go)

6. Playstation 2: 117,800 (down from 146,000)

So what does this mean for the video game industry? A few things. Nintendo takes back their top non-portable spot after losing it last month to the price reduced Playstation 3. Back over the half million a month mark, the Nintendo Wii price reduction to $199 had been a long time coming and has shown it was enough of a stimulus to even beat out the Nintendo DS as the top selling console of the month. While Sony made a huge campaign out of their price drop back in September, Nintendo has been more subtle about theirs, only posting in circulars instead of the TV adds Sony has used to attempt to make up ground.

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