Halo: Reach is biggest selling US title so far this year

Newly released NPD figures show Bungie's Halo: Reach as being the top performing retail SKU in the US for the first nine months of 2010, despite only releasing on September 14.

At the time of the figures being compiled, Reach had sold 3.29 million units in the US.

The sales figures, released to GamaSutra, show that Reach outperformed its predecessor in the Halo series, ODST, by almost one hundred per cent, with ODST only clocking 1.52 million sales in the US.

Going back even further, Halo 3 matched Reach's 3.3 million figure in launch month, but during a period when the install base of console was only a third of what it is now. Translated, this means that whilst 49 per cent of all Xbox owners bought Halo 3 at launch, only 15 per cent did so with Reach.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii bought Nintendo second place in the January to September chart, with third going to Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption. A full list of the top retail SKUs in the US for the first nine months of 2010 is listed below.

• 1. Halo: Reach (Bungie, Microsoft Game Studios)
• 2. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo, Nintendo)
• 3. Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego, Rockstar)
• 4. Pokemon SoulSilver (Nintendo, Nintendo)
• 5. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nintendo, Nintendo)
• 6. Wii Fit Plus with Balance Board (Nintendo, Nintendo)
• 7. God of War III (Sony Santa Monica, Sony)
• 8. Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward, Activision)
• 9. Just Dance (Ubisoft, Ubisoft)
• 10. Wii Sports Resort with MotionPlus