NBA, Fallout rule the roost in October

While no one will mistake October as a joyous month for video game sales, there were a few nuggets of good news from NPD this month.

Retail software sales were up 6 percent – the first time the industry has seen growth since May. And the Xbox 360 saw hardware sales increase – the only console to do so. Otherwise… well, things weren’t so good.

On the whole, industry sales fell 4 percent compared to 2009. And hardware sales were down a whopping 26 percent – due to strong sales last year as the PS3 and Wii both dropped their prices.

The real news was the poor performance of “Medal of Honor” – which only managed to snag third place among October titles. “NBA 2K11” took top honors. And “Fallout: New Vegas” placed an impressive second – with sales of 680,000 units on the Xbox 360 alone.

As for the performance of PlayStation Move, that’s something of a mystery. The “video game accessories” category, which includes Move (and will include Kinect next month) was up 18 percent compared to last year – but the best selling item was the Xbox Live 1600 point card (for the fifth consecutive month).

Sony, when contacted, said it would not be releasing any updated sales data for Move today.

The top 10 selling games are after the break – without sales data, as NPD no longer provides that information in its monthly report.