NPD's January numbers are out and once again there were no surprises when it came to hardware rankings. The Wii dominated the scene with 466,000 units sold during the month, while Nintendo's other piece of hardware, the DS, moved 422,000. The Xbox 360 and the PS3 shifted 323,000 and 277,000 units respectively, as the PSP and PS2 rounded out the month with 101,000 and 41,600.
On the software side of things Xbox 360 and Wii games did quite well – nine out of ten on the list were for these two platforms. New Super Mario Bros. Wii was the best seller for the second consecutive month, followed closely by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 with 585,700 copies (326,700 for the Xbox 360 and 259,000 for PS3 consoles). Electronic Arts' Mass Effect 2 for the 360 also did well, selling 572,100 units.
After the best month in its history, however, the video game industry as a whole saw a 13 percent decline compared to the same month last year with $1.17 billion in sales. Hardware sales were worst hit in January, down 21 percent year-over-year, while software was down 12 percent.