Video game sales plunged 20% in February

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Video game sales in February suffered another double-digit monthly decline, plunging 20% to $1.06 billion, down from $1.33 billion in February 2011, according to a report released Thursday from the NPD Group Inc.

Sales of consoles and games dropped 34% in January compared with a year earlier.

Game software struggled the most, dropping 24.4% to $464.4 million last month versus $601.4 million a year ago.

A strong release of the PlayStation Vita, Sony’s Corp.’s latest portable game console, introduced in the U.S. on Feb. 22, helped to cushion the overall decline in hardware sales last month, but not enough to prevent an 18% decline in sales of consoles, including the Nintendo Wii.

The top 10 titles, listed below, continued to make up the bulk of the industry’s revenue, accounting for 78% of total game sales in terms of units, NPD said. Still, that’s less concentrated than it was a year ago, when the top 10 titles made up 94% of sales.

One notable new entry into the rarefied list of bestsellers is Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, the debut fantasy action title of 38 Studios, an independent game company founded by former major league baseball pitcher Curt Schilling, whom we recently profiled.

Top 10 U.S. Video Games for February 2012

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Activision Blizzard)

2. Final Fantasy XIII-2 (Square Enix)

3. UFC Undisputed 3 (THQ)

4. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (38 Studios / Electronic Arts)

5. Just Dance 3 (Ubisoft)

6. NBA 2K12 (Take-Two Interactive Software)

7. Soul Calibur V (Namco Bandai)

8. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Softworks)

9. Twisted Metal 2012 (Sony)

10. Battlefield 3 (Electronic Arts)

Source: NPD Group Inc.

RELATED:

Electronic Arts to bring SimCity back in 2013

Google Play unifies games, music, movies, books

Medal of Honor Warfighter gets into fighers’ psyches

— Alex Pham

Screenshot of Final Fantasy XIII courtesy of Square Enix.