NPD results for January are in!

Last night, the NPD Group revealed their sales statistics for the video game industry during the month of January. Unsurprisingly, Nintendo reigned supreme once again. Nintendo DS remained one of the best selling platforms of the month selling 251,000 units, but unexpectedly was outperformed by the likes of Nintendo’s own Wii console and even Sony’s Playstation 3. While analysts like Michael Pachter blame some of these less-than-stellar results on Nintendo’s shift of resources to Japan for the month due to big releases in their native country, other parts of the media remained shocked by the outcome of last month’s sales totals. Top software sales for the Nintendo DS are led by Mario Party DS, selling 139,000 copies and Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, which sold 133,000 units and was the tenth best selling game in the United States for the month.

On the Sony side of things, the Playstation Portable continued to sell well, with 230,000 units sold in the month of January. As usual, there were not any Playstation Portable games in the top ten software list for the month, however you can rest assured that both the Nintendo DS and Playstation Portable will have their fair share of top-selling games in the months ahead, with likely commercial successes like Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword and God of War: Chains of Olympus on the way in March.

Hit the jump to check out the precise sales figures for both hardware and software in January

As a whole, the gaming industry went down six percent compared to January 2007. The industry raked in $1.18 billion compared to last year’s $1.25 billion. This decline could however be contributed to the fact that tallies were done in a five week period last January, as compared to a four week period this January. In that case, industry growth is on track.

Below is a full list of top selling gaming platforms and software:

Hardware sales for the month of January 2008: