American video game retailer posts year-end top 5

GameStop, which has stores in the USA and Canada, announced its five top-selling games over the Christmas period as part of a financial statement. New Super Mario Bros. Wii, a Nintendo Wii exclusive, was one of GameStop's five best-selling games over the period, while the other four were all released on more than one hardware platform.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii was also the only game released in December to make the list, as all the others were out in November.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which smashed previous records for the fastest-selling video game, was in the top 5 after its release on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. During the build-up to the game's release, GameStop received more pre-orders for MW2 than all of the games that it sold for the previous Call of Duty game.

Venice-set Assassin's Creed II was produced for Xbox 360 and PS3, with a PC version to follow in March 2010; the role-playing adventure Dragon Age: Origins for PC, 360 and PS3 came out in early November, apart from in Europe where the PS3 version was held back until later in the month; Left 4 Dead 2 was for 360 and PC, convincing the vast majority of fans of the original that an entirely new game was preferable to an expansion.

All the games were highly rated, obtaining aggregate scores of over 85% on review compilation sites Metacritic and GameRankings.