NBA 2K9 Dominates Basketball Sales

The full Top 20 in sales for October has been released by NPD. NBA 2K9 placed at #9 with the 360 version selling 202,000 copies while the PS3 version came in at #17. Not even the 360 version of NBA Live 09 was able to reach the Top 20.

This is a huge increase year over year for the NBA 2K series. 2K8 didn’t make the Top 10 last year meaning it sold less than 117,000 copies on the 360. While many sports titles haven’t seemed to grow much with increased user base clearly this isn’t the case here. 2K9 has practically doubled 2K8’s first month results.

For the sake of comparison with another 2K Sports title, MLB 2K8 (360) sold 237,000 in it’s first month. However that was as a console exclusive. If NBA 2K9 had been the only basketball title available on the 360 it probably would’ve sold more in the area of 300,000+.

While it is no surprise that 2K9 would outsell Live on the 360, I doubt many would’ve expected 2K9’s PS3 version to top Live’s 360 as well. This is generally what happens though when a game starts being widely regarded as the preferred choice. Despite 2K9 not having the flashy features or marketing push it appears to have widened the margin between the two. Next year will show whether all these new purchasers will be loyal ones or if some of the problems that have been experienced so far this year (primarily with online play) open things up for Live to regain some ground.