GTA IV, Nintendo Ruled May Game Sales

New video game sales figures from NPD find Grand Theft Auto IV in the top sales slot...but the rest of the market is dominated by Nintendo.

New figures for retail sales of video games in the Unites States have been released by the NPD Group, and to almost no one’s surprise, the top selling game title for the month was Take 2 Games’ Grand Theft Auto IV. The rest of the month’s sales were positively dominated by Nintendo, but neither Sony nor Microsoft are likely to go home crying because the industry is on track for its biggest year ever, and May sales were up 37 percent from a year ago.

“The U.S. video games industry has generated $6.6 billion in sales so far this year, which exceeds total 1997 annual revenues,” wrote NPD Group analysts Anita Frasier, in the report. “The industry is on pace to achieve revenues in the $21 billion–23 billion range for 2008.”

Grand Theft Auto IV sold 442,900 units on the PlayStation 3—which would be a respectable figure, if it weren’t for the same game selling a whopping 871,300 copies for the Xbox 360 platform. The disparate sales figures will no doubt fuel Microsoft’s Xbox 360 marketing and developer evangelism efforts, since they show that Xbox 360 users certainly don’t hesitate to plunk down money for a new, must-have game. However, the NPD Group’s Frazier doesn’t think GTA IV is particularly driving hardware sales for either platform, but projected a possible lift in console sales from Father’s Day and graduation gift-giving.

On the console front, the Nintendo Wii continued to rampage Godzilla-like over the market, mving 675,000 units during the month of May. In comparison, Sony moved 298,700 PS3s and Microsoft sold 186,000 Xbox 360 units—a disparity Sony is likely to use in its marketing and evangelism efforts. The Nintendo DS handheld gaming system sold 452,600 units, and Sony’s PSP portable system soft 182,300 units during the month.

In terms of game titles, the Wii also left its mark on May sales figures: although GTA IV took top honors, Wii Mario Kart,Wii Play, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl took the next highest-selling slots for the month. Nintendo titles also accounted for three more slots in the top ten, including the Wii version of Guitar Hero III.