February NPD Number Crunch: Dead Space 3 dethrones Black Ops 2 with 605,000 copies sold

February was a great month for new software releases, especially when you finally manage to dethrone the top-selling title for the last four months. According to market research firm NPD Group, EA's Dead Space 3 was the top selling game for February 2013 with no less than 605,000 units sold in the U.S. alone.  Activision's Black Ops II slips to second place for the first time since it launched back in November 2012, followed by Crytek's Crysis 3 which takes third on the NPD software top ten with sales of 260,000 units.

Other new titles which managed to break into the software top ten include Konami's Metal Gear series spin-off Rising: Revengeance, Sega's critically panned Aliens: Colonial Marines (well, at least it can lay claim to something), and Sony's Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time.

Those of you wanting to keep tabs on how well Wii U has been doing since its dismal January showing wil be interested to know that Nintendo's latest platform managed to perform 40 percent better last month, which by NPD's reckoning amounts to some 64,000 units in hardware sales.  Not entirely stellar, as the Wii U still enjoys the dubious distinction of performing much worse week for week than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

For its part, Microsoft's 360 managed to lead hardware sales again last month with 302,000 consoles sold; if you're keeping count, that makes the Xbox 360 a best-seller in the U.S. for 26 months in a row!

Unfortunately any good news is tempered by the reality that industry sales as a whole continued to shrink last month. NPD reports that February 2013's results are 25 percent lower year-on-year, though the firm is quick to note that their monthly report factors physical retail sales which account for "roughly 50 percent of the total consumer spend on games." The rest is of course covered by used and digitally downloaded titles. Indeed, NPD estimates February's used games sales could add another $90 million USD on its own, while digital sales were worth $319 million USD.

February 2013 US Games Industry Summary
Total Industry Sales - $810.0 million USD (-25%)
Console Hardware Sales - $244.2 million USD (-36%)
Console Software Sales - $352.0 million USD (-27%)
Total Software Sales - $369.9 million USD (-27%)
Accessory Sales - $213.9 million USD (-3%)