Videogame sales fall 8%in 2009 in UK, Japan, U.S.

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Videogame sales in the three leading markets — Britain, Japan and the United States — declined 8% last year to 379.3 million units, according to a report released on Wednesday.

Activision’s “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,” was the top-selling game of the year, meanwhile, despite only being released in November, according to the Top Global Markets report.

Nintendo games grabbed the next four places on the 2009 best-selling list, according to the report, which is compiled using figures from the NPD Group, GfK Chart-Track Ltd and Enterbrain Inc.

The Top Global Markets report said videogame sales declined 14% in Britain, 2% in Japan and 7% in the United States last year compared with the previous year.

Console software sales fell by 6% in Britain while portable game software sales were off by 25%.

In Japan, console software sales dropped by 5% and portable game software sales fell by 1%.

In the United States, console software sales fell by 7% while portable game software sales dipped by 8%.

The report attributed much of the decline to the shrinking PlayStation 2 market, which declined in unit sales by 56% in the United States, 67% in Britain and by 55% in Japan.

“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” notched up total sales of 11.86 million units in Britain, Japan and the United States, selling 8.82 million copies in the United States, 237,500 in Japan and 2.80 million in Britain.

The next four top-selling titles were Nintendo’s “Wii Sports Resort,” “New Super Mario Bros. Wii,” “Wii Fit Plus” and “Wii Fit.”

They sold 7.57 million copies, 7.41 million copies, 5.80 million copies and 5.44 million copies respectively in the three markets.