May sales: 360 falls behind, Wii Fit blasts off

Here's your monthly data dump from NPD as I sort through May videogame sales for an article in tomorrow's Daily Variety.

First take: Playstation 3 is really opening up a lead over Xbox 360. And there's no obvious reason for it beyond just greater interest in one console over another. "Grand Theft Auto IV' was the only game either system had in the top 10. It seems the price cut, Blu-ray, and better games (especially "Metal Gear Solid 4") are finally driving new buyers to pick PS3 over 360 or gamers who bought a 360 early to finally buy that PS3.

Of course Nintendo still remains dominant. Seven of the top 10 were for its consoles and six were self-published. Wii Fit made a fantastic debut, especially for such an alternative and expensive game, selling 688,000 units in its first few weeks.

"Wii Fit" was one of only two new games, along with "Iron Man," to even crack the top 10. Among the big new releases that didn't sell over 102,000 units last month were "Haze," "Boom Blox" and "Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian."

"Grand Theft Auto IV" remains dominant. After a little more than a month, Rockstar's mega-hit has sold a total of 4.16 million units in the U.S. according to NPD (and 8.5 million worldwide according to Take-Two).

More analysis coming later, but for now here are your numbers. Again, all data is U.S. only, according to NPD, for May

Game                        Platform    Publishers    Units sold
Grand Theft Auto IV      360         Rockstar      871,300
Mario Kart Wii              Wii         Nintendo      787,400
Wii Fit                         Wii         Nintendo      687,700
Grand Theft Auto IV      PS3        Rockstar       442,900
Wii Play                       Wii         Nintendo      294,600
Super Smash Brawl       Wii         Nintendo      171,100
Iron Man                      PS2         Sega            130,600
Guitar Hero III             Wii         Activision     116,800
Pokemon... Darkness   DS          Nintendo       107,000
Pokemon... Time         DS         Nintendo        102,000

Console  May sales   Liftetime-to-date
Wii         675,100       10.3 M
DS          452,600        20.05 M
PS3         208,700       4.5M
360         186,600       10.3 M
PSP         182,300       11.6 M

Category          May revenue  Change  Year-to-date revenue  Change
Total industry    $1.12B        +37%       $6.5B                          +32%
Hardware          $428.6M      +34%       $2.27B                        +17%
Software           $536.9M      +41%       $3.42B                        +45%
Accessories       $150.8M      +30%       $901.3M                     +29%