Sales Data for 2008 has Mario Kart Wii on Top

In a recent Gamespot article, myriads of data revealed what seems to be commonplace in this console generation: Nintendo's games are selling a lot.  In this case, Mario Kart Wii sold the most of any game last year, amounting to 8.94 million units being moved in 2008, according to data from Top Global Markets.  The runner-up was Wii Fit, which sold 8.31 million units.

As the data shows, 2008 was a good year for gaming.  The industry raked in $21.3 billion in hardware, accessories, and game sales in the US alone, with a global revenue of $32 billion.  The rest of the top five spots for software includes Grand Theft Auto IV (7.29 million), Super Smash Bros. Brawl (6.32 million), and Call of Duty: World at War (5.89 million).  For those counting, three of the top five spots are Nintendo-made games that appear on a single platform.

Globally, 409.9 million units of software were sold in 2008, 11 percent up from 2007's record of 357.7 million.  The primary points of growth came from the US and UK, who saw 15 percent and 26 percent changes.  Oddly, Japan saw a 13 percent slide in software sales.

Top Global Markets, when delivering this news, takes combined retail data from NPD, Gfk, and Enterbrain to give adequate analysis on this past year.  To see the breakdown in the top five games and how they sold in the US, Japan, and UK, see the chart (courtesy of Gamespot) below.

TOP GLOBAL MARKET'S 2008 GLOBAL SOFTWARE SALES