July NPD: Xbox 360 takes top spot while StarCraft II dominates

The NPD Group, the top game-industry research firm has released figures of the total amount spent on video game products in the United States during July. The company has revealed that US consumers shelled out $846.5 million on games, hardware and accessories over the course of the month.

July sales saw a minor 2% drop in Xbox units while every other console suffered double digit drops. This earned the Xbox 360 the rare opportunity to overtake the Nintendo DS as the best-selling piece of video game hardware last month. To put things in perspective, NPD analyst Anita Frazier notes, "It's the first time since September '07 (Halo 3 launch) that the 360 was the top-selling hardware platform."

NPD Group listed the following totals of hardware sales for July 2010:

Xbox 360 - 443,500
Nintendo DS - 398,400
Wii - 253,900
PlayStation 3 - 214,500
PlayStation Portable - 84,000

While the list of software sales only covers console and portable hardware, one other game that deserves to be mentioned is StarCraft II. Despite just five days on the market in July, the much-anticipated RTS sold an impressive 721,000 units at retail in July. Of course the figure is even higher when digital and global sales are included.

NPD Group listed the following totals of software sales for July 2010: