Video game sales up 18 percent last month

It seems sales of video games and hardware aren't suffering at all from the financial crisis. Data released by indicates sales in the US jumped 18 percent last month and the forecast for the holiday season looks well. Shipments of the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360 console were up, while Sony PlayStation 3 were down. The report also notes sales of portable gaming devices, like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, fell by 14 percent. The best selling game in the U.S. last month was Fable II, with sales of 790,000 units.

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.

Dennis said the release of the Microsoft-produced "Fable II" and Bethesda Networks' "Fallout 3," which ranked as the first and third best-selling games in October, helped increase the Xbox 360's consumer attach rate. Xbox sales will get an even greater boost in December by "Gears of War 2" sales, as the game has already sold over 2 million copies since its release on November 7, Dennis added.

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.

More details at Reuters.