Nintendo had the largest presence on NPD Group's Top 20 June U.S. video game retail charts, as Mario titles on Wii and Pokemon games on Nintendo DS proliferated the rankings, the tracking firm revealed to Gamasutra on Friday.
Nintendo had a total of eight out of 20 titles on the list, compared to other publishers like Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts and Ubisoft that had one or two titles each that made the chart.
As revealed Thursday, three Nintendo games made the top 10 with Super Mario Galaxy 2, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Wii Fit Plus. The top 20 also included the Nintendo DS games Pokemon SoulSilver, Pokemon HeartGold and New Super Mario Bros., as well as Mario Kart Wii. All publishers included, 12 out of the 20 titles were games for Nintendo Wii or DS.
Notably, Nintendo's Wii Sports Resort also made the top 20 for the month despite being included with all new Wii hardware as of May. Its presence on the top 20, while at the bottom, would suggest that existing Wii owners who didn't get the game in a hardware bundle are still picking up the title separately.
June was a slow month for new major releases -- the only new titles in the top 20 were Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment's Harry Potter: Years 1-4 for Wii (136,000 units), the Xbox 360 version of Activision Blizzard's Transformers: War for Cybertron (132,000 units) and the Wii and DS versions of Disney Interactive's Toy Story 3 (DS: 164,000; Wii: sales undisclosed).
The full top 20, courtesy of the NPD Group, is as follows:
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What's more surprising is that the game still sells at its original price of $35. Compare this to other DS games that go into price protection about a year into release, maybe less. People will pay for quality or a good brand. In this case they get both.