Earlier today, as part of an earnings report, Ubisoft revealed some interesting sales data for the past couple of years. Their report included the eleven best-selling video games over the 21-month period from January 2010 to September 2011, and the far and away leader was Call of Duty: Black Ops with nearly 15 million copies sold; 12 million of those sales took place over the 2010 holiday season. The next-highest-selling game was Ubisoft’s own Just Dance 2, with slightly over five million copies sold. The full list is below, with Nintendo exclusives bolded.
1. Call of Duty: Black Ops – 14,983,459
2. Just Dance 2 – 5,245,480
3. Madden NFL 11 – 5,195,251
4. Halo: Reach – 4,746,560
5. New Super Mario Bros. Wii – 4,231,423
6. NBA 2K11 – 4,202,926
7. Pokémon HeartGold/SoulSilver – 3,943,889
8. Red Dead Redemption – 3,877,037
9. Wii Fit Plus – 3,577,800
10. Pokémon Black/White – 3,581,789
11. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood – 3,141,187
Out of those eleven games, Pokémon Black/White was the only one actually released in 2011; all the others are from 2010.
I think this list has some pretty good Nintendo representation here. If you combined the Pokémon titles, they overtake sales of everything except Black Ops, though that might not be a very fair thing to do.
