GTA: San Andreas Number One U.S. Game In December

Software and hardware sales figures for North America in December 2004 have now been released, with Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas taking the top spot in the all formats chart, showing around one and a half million copies sold. Despite hardware shortages, PlayStation 2 titles dominate the top ten, with Need For Speed: Underground 2 coming in at number two, selling around a million, and Madden NFL 2005 at number three with just under that figure - both of these multi-platform titles also sold at least as many again on the other consoles. The highest ranked Xbox title was Halo 2, ranked at number four, and the highest ranked GameCube title was Mario Party 6 at number ten. Looking across at the handheld market, the highest ranked Game Boy Advance title was Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories at number six, showing an extremely healthy half a million units sold, and the highest ranked Nintendo DS title was Super Mario 64 DS, down at number thirteen with over 400,000 copies bought. In terms of hardware sales, the lack of stock of the PlayStation 2 and, to a lesser degree, the Xbox gave rather closer results than might have been expected. The Xbox was the best selling console, shipping around one and a quarter million units, followed by the PlayStation 2 with approximately a million, and the GameCube trailing a little behind that. The difference between the U.S. and global user bases is particularly striking, with 66 percent of the PlayStation 2 user base being outside of the USA, 40 percent of the GameCube user base, and yet only 25 percent of the Xbox user base. The Xbox's failure in Japan is well documented, but such a low figure seems to indicate somewhat disappointing sales in the rest of the world as well. The total installed user base for each console in the U.S. now stands at almost 27 million for the PlayStation 2, around 12 million for the Xbox, and around 9 million for the GameCube. This compares to recently announced global figures for the PlayStation of 80 million, although world-wide sales for the Xbox and GameCube can only be estimated at around 16 to 17 million for the former, and around 15 million for Nintendo’s home console.