Not Even Resident Evil 6 And Pokémon BW2 Could Prevent October Declines In U.S.

October represented a month of “steep declines” for videogame sales at retail, owing to lower sales of games as compared to last year, when hits like Battlefield 3 and Batman: Arkham City were released, the NPD Group reported this afternoon. Hardware sales dropped 37% while total retail spend dropped from $1 billion to $755.5 million.

There were a few exceptions to the decline trend. Skylanders: Giants sold over 160% more units than last year’s Skylanders title did in its debut month and NBA 2K12 outsold last year’s game by 60%. Meanwhile, FIFA Soccer 13 saw an increase of 13% as compared to its predecessor. However, these games alone weren’t enough to offset the decline of the retail console software market.

Sales of portable software, however, were up 37% as compared to last year, owing to the release of Pokémon Black/White 2.

The top ten best-selling games in October were as follows:

Game Informer report that Bethesda’s Dishonored sold 460,200 copies in the month of October. Meanwhile, XCOM, which didn’t chart in the top-10, sold 114,000 copies. No sales figures have been provided for Resident Evil 6, but we do know that Capcom had shipped 4.5 million copies of the game, worldwide, by the first week of October.

On the bright side, the NPD Group say that November will be a month to look forward to as far as sales go, owing to the release of Assassin’s Creed III, Halo 4, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, and the Wii U.

On the hardware front, the Xbox 360 sold 270,000 units in October and was the top-selling hardware platform for the 15th consecutive month.