US hardware sales rocket, software takes a hit

The NPD Group has released its monthly report and it makes for some interesting reading.

Xbox One and PlayStation 4 both launched in the US last month, and along with an upturn in sales for Nintendo 3DS, it's meant that hardware sales increased 58% year over year. The downside to this increase in hardware sales was that the number of games sold was significantly less in America during the month of November, taking a 24% dip year over year. Overall retail sales were up 7% over last year.

In notes taken from the report (and shared on Neogaf) a few interesting facts were highlighted, along with the top ten selling games in North America across all platforms (see below for that).

First up is the news that PlayStation 4 was the best selling console of the month, however Xbox One was the fastest selling and represented Microsoft's biggest ever console launch (so it's not all doom and gloom). The Xbox One sold 101k console units per day in that time, while the PS4 sold more software than any other next-gen console and had a higher attach rate than either PS2 or PS3.

Nintendo 3DS sold 770k units last month (that's 230K more than the same month of last year), although the Wii U could only managed to shift 220k units during the crucial month (however, it should be noted that that's still around 340% more than the month before).

As you can see from the top ten chart attached below, Call of Duty: Ghosts still rules the roost from a software perspective, and once again dominates the charts across all platforms. As these figures are cross-platform, we can't asses what percentage of sales were next-gen titles, and they make no mention of Nintendo exclusives. Pokémon X and Pokémon Y each sold more than 225k and the The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past sold 280k (rising to 405k if you count the games bundled in with the Zelda-branded 3DS). Super Mario 3D World shifted 215k units for Wii U.