April NPD: Mortal Kombat wins for Outworld, Xbox is top console again
The Mortal Kombat reboot rose up against franchise fatigue, an incapacitated PSN, and space-time-tunneling competition to claim the top spot on the NPD's April sales charts. Turns out there's a big audience out there for seeing inside some dude's body as his bones are breaking. Oh, and for accessible, fast-paced fighting games. (But mostly the X-ray bone breaks.)
According to the NPD, Mortal Kombat sold just under 900K copies. Portal 2, of course, came in at No. 2.
Likely as a result of these two games, total US spending was up 20 percent year-over year, from $802.4 million in 2010 to $961.2 million in 2011. Microsoft can also claim some responsibility for the high numbers — it informed us that the Xbox 360 was the top-selling console last month, moving 297,000 units (a year-over-year increase of 60 percent).
Top 10 best-selling games (US) for April 2011:
- Mortal Kombat — PS3, 360 — 1 — Warner Bros.
- Portal 2 — 360, PS3, PC — 2 — Electronic Arts (Valve)
- Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars — WII, 360, NDS, PS3, 3DS, PSP, PC — 3 — LucasArts
- Call of Duty: Black Ops — 360, PS3, NDS, Wii, PC — 4 — Activision
- Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters — 360, PS3, Wii — 5 — Electronic Arts
- Crysis 2 — 360, PS3, PC — 6 — Electronic Arts
- Just Dance 2 — Wii — 7 — Ubisoft
- Michael Jackson The Experience — 360, Wii, PS3, NDS, PSP — 8 — Ubisoft
- Pokemon White Version — NDS — 9 — Nintendo
- NBA 2K11 — 360, PS3, PS2, Wii, PSP, PC — 10 — Take 2 Interactive