Diablo III tops US May chart

Blizzard’s Diablo III was the best selling game in the US in May, according to NPD’s latest numbers.

The achievement doesn’t even take digital sales into account, which in Diablo III’s case would have been sizable.

There were four other new entries in the US Top Ten – Rockstar’s Max Payne 3 (second), Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier (third), Rebellion’s Sniper Elite V2 (seventh) and Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma (ninth).

Analyst Michael Pachter tweeted that Max Payne 3’s sales were less than 50 per cent of LA Noire’s”.

"To dig deeper into the new physical retail software performance this month, new launches generated 31 per cent more dollars this May than they did last May, largely due to the success of Diablo 3," NPD analyst Anita Frazier stated.

"This May, new SKU launches across console, portable and PC game software generated 188 per cent more unit sales per SKU than they did last May. So while there were fewer new item introductions this May, they collectively generated more unit and dollar sales."

In the hardware charts Xbox 360 was the best selling console for the 15th month in succession, with total sales of 160,000 units. Microsoft says that represents a 45 per cent share of the entire home console market.

3DS was the only system to see its unit sales increase year-on-year, climbing 17 per cent.