By : Stephanie Prange | Posted: 10 Sep 2009
sprange@questex.com

The video game industry continued to suffer from the bad economy in August, with overall sales falling 16% from the same month in 2008, according to data from The NPD Group. Overall game sales have fallen behind 14% year-to-date compared to 2008, from $10.58 billion to $9.07 billion.

“The industry realized its sixth consecutive month-over-month decline, and while improved over the last several months, it's still a notable decline,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.
   
Game software sales fell 15% in August compared to the same month last year, while hardware sales lagged behind 25%.

"The price cuts implemented on [PlayStation 3] and [Xbox 360] hardware already made an impact on unit sales, despite having been executed fairly late in the month,” Frazier said. “It will be interesting to see the full impact of the new price points on September sales."

Among next-generation consoles, Sony’s PS3 sold 210,000 units in August, compared to 215,400 for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and 277,400 for the Nintendo Wii.

"All hardware systems with the exception of the PS2 realized an increase in unit sales over July,” Frazier said. “The PS3 captured the greatest increase month-over-month, with unit sales boosted by 72% over July levels.”

The top three games for the month were Madden NFL 10 for the Xbox 360, Wii Sports Resort for the Wii and Madden NFL 10 for the PS3, respectively.

"As many predicted, Madden captured the top spot for the month, selling nearly 1.9 million units across its five [versions],” Frazier said.

"The PS3 was the only platform to realize a year-over-year increase in total software sales and this is reflected in the top 10 list for the month which includes two PS3 games," she said.

The other top 10 PS3 game was Batman: Arkham Asylum.
 

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