November NPD Number Crunch: Xbox 360 hardware sales nearly double other consoles, including Wii U & Wii combined

Halo 4 may not have topped the record-setting launch week sales of Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops II, but it played its part in ensuring that the Xbox 360 was the top-selling platform for last month.  Microsoft earlier announced that Xbox 360 hardware sales hit 1.26 million units for the month of October (over half of those during the Black Friday shopping week alone), which by their reckoning is nearly double those of all other platforms, including the Wii U and Wii combined.

The Wii U launch was still successful in the sense that it brought in more revenue for Nintendo than the Wii did back in November 2006 thanks to its higher price tag, despite selling slightly less than the Wii during its own launch week at 425,000 units.  On the handheld front, the 3DS sold a very handsome 540,000 units last month while the original DS still managed to sell 370,000 units.  In fact, the DS was the only hardware platform to see a year-on-year increase in unit sales for November.  Black Friday was good for Nintendo's handhelds, to say the least.

Wii U software (in terms of exclusives) didn't perform nearly as well during launch month, as the big boys Black Ops II and Halo 4 easily topped NPD's software top ten chart with sales of a whopping 7.2 million and 3.2 million units, respectively.  That's what it takes to be AAA in month of strong titles, but third place finisher Assassin's Creed III didn't fare badly at all with sales of 2.9 million units.

Unfortunately even sales like these couldn't pull the industry as a whole out of its ongoing trend of decline during November, though the year-on-year decrease wasn't nearly so bad this time around.

November 2012 US Games Industry Summary
Total Industry Sales - $2.55 billion USD (-11%)
Console Hardware Sales - $838.9 million USD (-13%)
Console Software Sales - $1.43 billion USD (-11%)
Total Software Sales - $1.46 million USD (-11%)
Accessory Sales - $280.9 million USD (-8%)