Activision Blizzard's Call of Duty: Black Ops has sold close to 15 million new retail copies in the U.S. through September, nearly three times as much as any other title has sold since the beginning of 2010.
The data from industry tracking firm NPD, revealed as part of a Ubisoft earnings report, measures total new retail sales in the U.S. from January 2010 through September 2011.
Black Ops had sold over 12 million copies in the 2010 holiday period after its November release, according to NPD reports from the time.
Ubisoft's Just Dance 2 is the second biggest seller for the period, with over 5.25 million sales for the year, while Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood snuck into the 11th position with 3.14 million sales.
EA's Madden NFL 11 was the third biggest seller with nearly 5.2 million sales in the period, while Take-Two sports title NBA2K11 finished sixth with 4.2 million.
Nintendo catalog titles New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Wii Fit Plus continued to sell well during the period with 4.23 million and 3.58 million sales, respectively.
Pokemon titles Gold/Silver and Black/White also made the top 10 with 3.94 million and 3.58 million sales respectively. Black/White was the only 2011 release to appear on the list of top sellers.
A full list of the top-selling new retail titles in the U.S. from January 2010 through September 2011 is included below:
| Rank | Title | Publisher | Sales |
|---|
| 1 | Black Ops | Activision Blizzard | 14,983,459 | | 2 | Just Dance 2 | Ubisoft | 5,245,480 | | 3 | Madden NFL 11 | EA | 5,195,251 | | 4 | Halo: Reach | Microsoft | 4,746,560 | | 5 | New Super Mario Wii | Nintendo | 4,231,423 | | 6 | NBA 2K11 | Take 2 | 4,202,926 | | 7 | Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver | Nintendo | 3,943,889 | | 8 | Red Dead Redemption | Take 2 | 3,877,037 | | 9 | Wii Fit Plus | Nintendo | 3,577,800 | | 10 | Pokemon Black/White | Nintendo | 3,581,789 | | 11 | Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood | Ubisoft | 3,141,187 |
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As for Cataclysm, the prevalence of digital downloads for that game likely affected the results, as others have said.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/37228/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV_Passes_22M_Shipped_
Franchise_Above_114M.php
Checking vgchartz for Red Dead has higher numbers than what is posted here.
4.5m for 360, plus 4m for ps3.
http://www.vgchartz.com/worldtotals.php?name=red+dead+redemption&publisher=&cons
ole=&genre=&minSales=0&results=50&sort=Total
I guess the difference is explained by restricting it to U.S. sales?
And then possibly the difference between shipped and sold?
Remember, these are just new U.S. retail sales.
EDIT: Damn! Kyle you beat me to it!
BTW- Sorry for making you defend your article. It just had a few discrepancies I had to work through and make sense of.