EA's 'Madden' Game Scores Big

Video-games publisher Electronic Arts'(ERTS Quote) sports blockbuster, Madden NFL 08, stormed the August charts for game sales, with more than 1.8 million copies of the title sold in less than a month since its release.

EA sold 896,600 copies of Madden for Microsoft's(MSFT Quote) Xbox 360, 643,600 copies for Sony's(SNE Quote) older PlayStation 2 console and 336,200 copies for the PlayStation 3, according to data from research firm NPD Group.

Madden, which was released on Aug. 14, bagged the top two spots on NPD's list of best-selling video games for the month.

Competitor Take-Two Interactive(TTWO Quote) also found good news in the August sales data. The company's sleeper hit, BioShock, released for the Xbox 360, ranked third on the charts with 490,900 copies sold in just about two weeks since launch. Take-Two has already said it has shipped 1.5 million BioShock games into retail stores.

Nintendo's games, Wii Play , Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and Mario Strikers Charged ranked fifth, sixth and seventh on the charts with sales of 256,800, 218,100 and 147,400 copies respectively.

Activision's(ATVI Quote) Guitar Hero 2 for the PS2 (145,400 copies) and Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80s game (127,100 copies) bagged the eighth and 10th spots on the charts.

On the hardware side, Sony's PlayStation 3 console continued its gains.

While still lagging behind rivals, the PS3 video game console sold 130,600 units to reach an installed base of 1.75 million in the U.S.