L.A. Noire sells 899,000 in May

For the second year in a row, Take-Two subsidiary Rockstar Games scored the top-selling new release for the month of May, following up 2010's Red Dead Redemption with L.A. Noire. However, even if it was the best-selling new release at US retail, the Team Bondi-developed L.A. Noire performed significantly worse than Rockstar San Diego's open-world Western.

According to sales data obtained by MarketWatch, L.A. Noire sold 899,000 units across the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. That figure comes in some 600,000 units below that of Red Dead Redemption, which received a marginally higher critical reception than L.A. Noire and sold 1.5 million units upon its release in May 2010.

L.A. Noire's sales performance, combined with Duke Nukem Forever's critical drubbing, has spooked Take-Two investors this week. Since Friday, the game company has seen its share value fall by nearly 8 percent to $14.49, though trading had largely stabilized today.

The performance of Team Bondi's action-investigation title was indicative of greater weakness in the US retail game market. Total industry sales fell 14 percent year-over-year to $743.1 million. Software was particularly weak in May, with combined console, handheld, and PC game sales falling 21 percent year-over-year to $400.1 million.

For more on L.A. Noire, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.