The economy may not be going so great for everybody and we are probably in a recession or heading in one. But all that depressing news doesn't effect gamers! Video game sales were up 18% in October from the same month a year ago! That's pleasantly surprising.
Video machine makers said the results boded well for the holiday season. The Wii console secured its title once more as the country's best-selling videogame console after Nintendo sold 803,210 units of the Wii in October, up from 687,000 in the previous month. Wii sales have topped 13 million units since Nintendo released the console in November 2006.
Cammie Dunway, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Nintendo of America, told Reuters that sales showed consumers would continue to buy the Wii during the holidays. U.S. consumers bought 371,000 of Microsoft Corp's Xbox 360 console in October, up from 347,200 units in the prior month. Microsoft cut the U.S. price of its entry-level console in September to $50 below the Wii.
The price cut helped spike a 7 percent increase in Xbox 360 unit sales from September, according to NPD Analyst Anita Frazier. "We feel cautiously optimistic (going into the holidays), we don't see anything in this (NPD) data that leads us to believe there's a pullback," said Microsoft spokesman David Dennis.
Sales of Sony Corp's PlayStation 3 dropped 18.2 percent from the prior month, from 232,400 units sold in September to 190,000 units sold in October. Still, "PS3 sales realized the greatest year-over-year monthly unit sales increase at 57 percent," Frazier said. The videogames industry is set to top $22 billion in 2008, according to NPD. U.S. sales of videogames hardware, software and accessories totaled $1.35 billion in October, with accessories sales falling 8 percent.
Original Article from Yahoo! Tech
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