Gamers are a very fickle bunch. They're also very smart. While Hollywood can blow hundreds of millions of dollars to make even crappy movies make millions at the box office, bad games generally do not sell well. (Enter the Matrix is an exeption, since the unfinished game sold over 5 million copies, but that was before the two shoddy sequels left fans feeling bad.)

The NPD Group, the tracking firm that tallies videogame sales, has released the numbers for 2006. There's a lag time between the end of a month and the actual numbers because top retailers like Wal-Mart, which accounts for about 25 percent of all game sales, no longer reveal their internal data--so NPD uses its own analysts and online surveys to round out the numbers.

The U.S. game industry had a record $12.5 billion year in 2006--and that number includes only console and portable hardware, games and accessories sales. PC game sales will be tabulated separately. The Top 10 games of 2006 each sold 1 million copies or more. That's huge, when you consider that 100,000 units sold is a decent number these days.

The top game of the year was Madden NFL 07 on PlayStation 2. In fact, PS2 dominated the sales charts, thanks to its installed base of over 37 million U.S. homes. Half of the Top 10 games were on PS2. And sports dominated the category--specifically, football. Madden sold 2.8 million copies on PS2 and another 1.1 million copies on Xbox 360. EA Sports sold an additional 1 million copies of NCAA Football 07 on PS2.

When it comes to local companies, both game developers in the Triangle made the Top 10. Epic Games' Xbox 360 shooter Gears of War sold over 1.8 million copies in less than two months in the U.S. alone. Red Storm Entertainment's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter sold 1 million copies on Xbox 360.

Other top games for the year include a pair of PS2 adventures from Square-Enix--Disney's Kingdom Hearts II (1.7 million sold) and Final Fantasy XII (1.3 million sold). Guitar Hero II from Activision sold over 1.3 million copies--most of them with the guitar controller. And Nintendo had a pair of winners on Nintendo DS--New Super Mario Brothers (2 million sold) and Brain Age (1.1 million).

When you take a look at these games, you can see they're all solid interactive entertainment. Sure, Madden's on the list every year, but that's because football is the most popular sport in this country. Outside of football, these games stand out because of innovation. Even the sequels add a whole new dimension to gaming. And Guitar Hero II and Brain Age have opened up gaming to the masses, just as Gears of War has helped Microsoft jump further ahead in the next gen console war.