Video Game Sales Fall for 6th Consecutive Month

As the holiday season approaches, things have yet to pick up for the video game industry as sales fell for the sixth month in a row in September.

Research group NPD reports that, in the month of September, sales of video game software, hardware and accessories fell 8 percent to $1.2 billion. Game hardware was hit the hardest, with sales falling 19 percent to $383 million. This month represents the first time that NPD has not publicly released sales for individual consoles (these numbers are still available for those willing to pay) but Microsoft was more than happy to reveal that the Xbox is still selling extremely well.

"Xbox 360 enters the holiday season with four consecutive months as the #1 console in the US, with 484,000 units sold during the month, up 37 percent from last September, a stark comparison to the other console platforms," Ars Technica quotes the Redmond, Washington-based company as saying.

The Associated Press reports that Nintendo sold 403,000 DSes in the U.S., along with 254,000 Wii consoles.

Sony has yet to reveal its console sales for the month of September.

Also down were software sales, dropping 6 percent to $614 million. Halo: Reach, Madden and Dead Rising 2 were the most popular titles of September. NPD provided figures for only Halo: Reach, which managed to sell 3.3 million units last month.

The only category that didn't experience a decline was accessory sales, which NPD says were driven by "Specialty Controllers" like Sony's PlayStation Move. Again, the group failed to provide much in the way of numbers, but did reveal that the best selling accessory was the Xbox Live 1600-point card.

_{Source: the Associated Press, Ars Technica}