Although Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 just shipped, NPD Group analyst Anita Frasier noted the EA published series has reached the milestone of a half-billion in US sales. Gamespot adds (via Forbes) that the game series is just one revenue stream for the 33-year-old athlete, who is set to hit $1 billion in career earning this year.

[Via VG247]

According to the latest NPD figures, the Wii has done more than introduce gaming to your grandma, as the console has managed to reach the 20 million mark in just 31 months on the market, MCV reports. That makes it the fastest-selling console in US history.

Following Nintendo's announcements for New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Wii Fit Plus, we wonder if the console will ever run out of steam. Considering how well it continues to sell in this region, despite the poor economy, we doubt it will any time soon.

THQ's probably quite happy it decided to return to the MMA ring (soon to be joined by EA Sports) with UFC 2009 Undisputed selling 1.01 million units across Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Other games didn't have it quite so good in their debut month, notably Punch-Out!!, which moved 150K copies on Wii.

DS and PS2 were both down, but May was an up month for PS3 with sales rising 3 percent. Xbox 360 sales remained unchanged over April.

-DS: 634K407K (-39%)
-Wii: 290K50K (-15%)
-Xbox 360: 175K -- 175K (0%)
-PS3: 131K4K (+3%)
-PS2: 117K55K (-32%)
-PSP: 100K16K (-13%)

Check out the software sales chart after the break.

Retail number lords, The NPD Group, have a couple of Twitter accounts for those interested in industry financial figures. There's the NPD account and another for the organization's analyst, Anita -- Miss Frazier, if you don't know her like that.

• @NPDgroup - The "official" page, carrying only blog entries and press releases.
• @NPDFrazier - Who knows?! Perhaps we'll gain insight into the life of a fabulous analyst.

Let the stalking continue. Ah, Twitter. Where you talk to "no one ... and everyone."

Are you puzzled as to why visionary director Steven Spielberg recently made the leap from managing motion pictures to creating block-n-ball Wii games? The answer can be found in a recent NPD study: According to the NPD research group, 63 percent of Americans have played a video game in the past six months -- but only 53 percent of Americans went out to the movies over the same time period. Mr. Spielberg is jumping off a burning ship.

Do you realize what this means? We're winning. We're not sure what we're winning, but surely someone, somewhere, was arguing about why video games are better than films. The NPD just supplied this lone crusader with an invaluable piece of empirical evidence. Keep the fire, brother. Your hour of victory draws near.

For more stats about how great video games are, check out the NPD's full report.

Guerrilla Games' FPS Killzone 2 passed the one million milestone a little while back, but it doesn't seem to be content with that. No, in fact, it's still selling copies, as the NPD numbers from April show the game unloaded 58,000 more units onto US soil, Gamasutra reports. This brings the US total for the game up to 677,000 copies, or about 4,739,000,000 dead Helghan.

Time Magazine thinks that video games are a good economic indicator -- as in, if the gaming industry is doing poorly (it's not), that speaks volumes about the national economic situation. And Time's reasoning is sound, more or less: "When people cannot spend $300 on a console or $50 on a game which can be used for hours and played over and over again, the money for discretionary spending has dried up."

The piece references declines in sales of the Nintendo Wii (selling "only" 340k units in April) as well as the recent loss report by Sony on its PlayStation division. Problem is, it makes no mention whatsoever of the repeated analyst reports citing year-over-year declines being forced by AAA-games being released in the traditionally dormant late-Winter/early-Spring months, during 2008. And furthermore, the author worries about the sales of the PS3 in April, not making any mention of the relatively robust PS2 and PSP sales during the same time period.

Then again, the Time website has Jim Cramer divvying out economic tips just three inches to the right of this piece, so, ya know, there's that trustworthy source of financial information.

Despite staying well outside the game media's chronicles of ridicule, Starbreeze's Vin Diesel star vehicle (note: not the one that's about him driving vehicles) failed to appear among the NPD group's list of top sellers for April. According to the NPD's Anita Frazier, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena sold 100,000 units across all platforms during its debut month. Oddly, the NPD data includes figures for March, even though the official North American release was on April 7th.

Since Starbreeze's previous effort, gothic comic adaptation The Darkness, broke into the top ten in June 2007, Riddick's performance may seem disappointing, especially in the face of positive word-of-mouth and a relatively quiet release month. Without a new tie-in film to generate buzz, the impetus fell on Atari's marketing -- and it seems to have failed to convince gamers that Vin Diesel still has some gas left in him.

Atari hadn't responded to our calls at the time of publishing, nor our suggestion to feed Vin a spicy burrito.

Did you see the NPD charts? The good news? PS2 sales went up 87% thanks to its new $99 price point. YAY! The not-so-good news? Well, PS2 beat PS3. If anything, the surprising turn in sales proves how truly powerful a price cut can be.

While PS3 sales are still lagging behind the competition, at least Sony is admitting to not getting the message across to the average Joe. "We often hear from our customers that they're surprised by everything the PS3 does in addition to what they purchased the device for -- including features like DLNA, free access to Wi Fi and Internet browser," Patrick Seybold, SCEA's Senior Director of Corporate Communications, told us in a statement. "In some ways, this serves as a reminder that there's more we can do to relay the full breadth and power of the PS3."

Hopefully, things will turn around in what Sony calls one of its "most aggressive marketing plans" yet. "We're revving up the new fiscal year with a broad tent of content and services across our platforms with envelope-pushing PS3 games like inFAMOUS, MAG, and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves ... We know our consumers have varying entertainment lifestyles from the Blu-ray movie fanatic to photo enthusiast, so we've outlined our most aggressive marketing plans to help showcase this tremendous value proposition to all our consumers. We've got a proven history in delivering the best entertainment experience and there is no doubt the PlayStation brand is staged for another big year."

Everything old is new again. The DS makes a resurgence thanks to camera-enhanced DSi, while the PS2 makes substantial gains thanks to its price drop. Pfft? Current gen hardware? That's so passé. We can't wait until the N64 and Dreamcast surge back onto the NPD lists.

- DS: 1.04M477K (+85%)
- Wii: 340K261K (-43%)
- Xbox 360: 175K155K (-47%)
- PS2: 172K60K (+87%)
- PS3: 127K91K (-42%)
- PSP: 116K52K (-31%)

See the software charts after the break. Warning! The list will feature some very old games.

During EA's earnings call yesterday, some interesting things involving the music genre of games emerged. NPD numbers reported by COO John Pleasants show the music genre has been way down this year compared to 2008, falling 36% during this year's first quarter and 42% in March alone. As a result of this sharp downturn, EA is expecting Rock Band to lose $400 million in 2009. The Cut Scene makes a very valid observation: During these periods last year, there were no major music titles released, whereas this year saw Guitar Hero: Metallica arriving in late March.

So what does this mean for the future? Well, EA is hoping that Rock Band: The Beatles can help turn this ship around, and produce some of the cash that Rock Band 2 wasn't able to, but it would appear that the music genre is losing its luster. Is it over-saturation? We know it isn't Legos. They make everything better ...

According to number crunchers at NPD, game industry sales have given Canadian retail outlets the cold shoulder so far in 2009. Much like the region's warmer cousin to the south, sales have slowed through the first quarter, with NPD reporting an 8.5 percent decline in overall sales compared to the same period last year. Interestingly, it isn't games that shoulder the biggest burden of this hit, but hardware, with sales of portables plummeting a dramatic 21 percent during the period. Console sales fared little better, dropping 14.5 percent in sales year-over-year.

The dip represents a first for the market since NPD began tracking Canadian sales in 2002. The group points to an overall lack of "blockbuster titles" so far compared to 2008 as a driving reason for the ongoing slump, with the same period in 2007 buffeted on sales of games like Guitar Hero III and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. As games like Resident Evil 5 and Halo Wars are not enough to get more Canadians checking out new platforms, clearly the time is right for a new hockey or moose hunting game to ski in and save the day.

Microsoft's Euro marketing exec for Xbox, David Gosen, is joining the chorus of suits starting to question the industry's overly Q4-focused release schedule. Speaking with MCV, Gosen points out that about 200 titles were released within three to four weeks last holiday -- with the third week of November (Thanksgiving in the States) being "crazy."

Gosen points to the success of Resident Evil 5 in March as a way of "de-seasonalizing" the industry. He admits that Christmas is "still the key selling period," but if more publishers get on board with this new thinking, it'll create "second or third release windows." GTA IV did gang-busters (gang-organizers?) last May -- Street Fighter IV also had surprising February sales this year.

Obviously, we -- by that, we mean our wallets -- are huge fans of this full-calendar approach. Top-tier sequels will likely do well whenever they release, but new IPs with potential need a little space to breathe.

Gamasutra's new piece on tie ratios is the most dangerous kind of analysis: The kind that requires some modicum of thought to really understand. Let us try to help. So, the PS3's tie ratio is just slightly above the Wii's now. Though Sony fans may want to declare this as a victory, it isn't necessarily one when you consider that the Wii has been selling like portable defibrillators at a butter carnival. Crazy console sales can make it hard for the tie ratio to keep up.

On the other hand, the stats include Wii Play, which is basically a controller, so we guess it's all in your perception. We'd encourage you to read Gamasutra's piece and form your own opinions.

The go-to game industry analysts see the downward sales in March as a trend that could continue over the next several months. Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter notes that hardware sales were down 19 percent year-over-year and he doesn't see a reversal of software sales in the "near term." Lazard Capital's Colin Sebastian is concerned that the industry continues to see sales "concentrated among a small group of top-tier software publishers and first-party platform holders." He believes this leaves little room for ... well, anyone else in the near future.

Both gurus see the second half of the year working out better for the industry. Edge notes that US industry sales have hit $4.25 billion during the first quarter, the same place they were during 2008's record-breaking year.