Late last Thursday the NPD group released their August sales numbers for the US.  The speculation that occurred before these number where releases was mostly over how well Madden '08, XBox 360 price cut, PS3 sales and Metroid Prime 3 vs BioShock.  Madden has historically done better on Sony consoles but would this trend change this time around?  How much of a boost will the price cut give the Xbox 360?  How will the PS3 one month after their price cut?  Will the established Metroid Prime 3 franchise outsell the new kid on the block BioShock?

To no one's surprise the best selling game in August was Madden '08 selling (1st) 896.6K on the Xbox 360, (2nd) 643.6K on the PS2 and (4th) 336.2K on the PS3.  It is interesting to see that a casual gaming franchise like Madden is selling the most copies on the Xbox 360 version.  The Sony platforms sold 979.8K copies of Madden but XBox 360 and Xbox sold more copies for the first time. 

Hardware sales where lead by the Wii selling 403.6K, Xbox 360 selling 276.7K, PS2 selling 202K and the PS3 selling 130.6K units.  While the Wii did well only the Xbox 360 saw any positive growth selling 107K more units than last month.  This increase was spurred on by a price cut to all three models and games like Madden '08 and BioShock, the two highest selling franchises in August.  The fact the PS3 sales dropped 20% last month is not a good sign for Sony because it implies that their clearance on 60GB PS3 is waining.  They need to make a real price drop to stimulate growth.

In August BioShock showed it was the top FPS of the month nearly tripling the sales of Metroid Price 3 (643.6K  to 218.1K).  Mediocre sales of Metroid Prime may have been a result of Nintendo's weak marketing effort.  Nintendo may feel that the first person shooter is not in line with the family fun the Wii represents.  Either way BioShock had an excellent month and should pave the way for a sequel.