NPD: January Canada game sales hit $79 million

Gaming sales got off to a strong start in the US this year, according to NPD Group's figures for the first five weeks of 2007, and it was a similar story north of the border. The industry-tracking firm reported that Canadian retail gaming sales amounted to $79.5 million in January, a 55-percent jump over the January period from the year before. But where the US numbers covered five weeks of sales instead of the usual four, NPD's Canadian numbers only reflect sales during the calendar month of January, so year-over-year comparisons are more relevant.

The increase was driven primarily by hardware sales, which more than doubled from $15.2 million to just over $31 million. Nintendo's Wii outpaced all the competition for the month with more than 34,000 units sold. Sony had the second best-selling console of the month, but it wasn't the PlayStation 3. Instead it was the aging PlayStation 2, which posted sales of more than 27,000 units. The PS3 actually finished significantly lower, with fewer than 6,800 units sold. The Xbox 360 nestled itself in between its rivals with sales just over 14,400.

On the software side of things, Capcom's Xbox 360 bug hunt Lost Planet: Extreme Condition unified the Canada and US January 2007 sales titles, selling more than 15,400 copies. Lost Planet had a little separation from the pack, with WarioWare: Smooth Moves (Wii), The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii), Gears of War (Xbox 360), and New Super Mario Bros. (DS) rounding out the top five in that order, each with sales between 12,000 and 13,000. The GameCube edition of Twilight Princess, the PS2 Guitar Hero 2 bundle, NHL 07 (PS2), Rainbow Six Vegas (Xbox 360), and NHL 07 (Xbox 360) filled out the back half of the top 10.