[james99]

The video game industry got some long-awaited good news in February.

Software sales came in slightly better than analysts were expecting, while hardware sales shattered forecasts. For the month, game sales fell 5 percent versus a year ago, according to the NPD. (Analysts had expected a drop of between 6 and 10 percent.) Sales of gaming hardware were up a surprising 10 percent, though.

 

[james99]

Call of Duty: Black Ops is now the best-selling game in U.S. History

This month also recorded a new milestone for Activision and developer Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops, as the title is now officially the best selling game of all time in the U.S., with 13.7 million copies sold in America alone.

 

[jeffaustin90]

Those Americans just love their Call of Duty games. Now if only they can make one so good that they dont' need to release a new game every year, maybe I would consider buying another CoD game.

 

[99semaj]

NPD irrelevant, misleading:EA, Activision

I don't think this refutes the OP's point (strengthens it if anything), but its a curious gap in NPD's methodology all the same.

The problem, say game publishers, is that NPD doesn't track software sold through digital outlets such as Microsoft's (MSFT, Fortune 500) Xbox Live, Sony's (SNE) PlayStation Network, or Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) iTunes.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/14/technology/video_game_sales/index.htm