14 DAY TRIAL // The NPD Group, which tracks hardware, software and accessories sales in North America, has released its charts for November, showing that the Nintendo DS is still the best selling gaming device for the month while the Xbox 360 from Microsoft continues to lead in the home console battle.
Overall the video game industry has managed to actually grow for the month by a healthy 8 percent, with the overall value of sales going up to 2.99 billion dollars during the month of November.
This is the first month of increases since March and overall for the year the industry is still struggling to match the performance seen last year.
Anita Frazier, who is an analyst for the NPD Group, has stated, “November sales represent the best November on record in terms of new physical retail sales. It bests November 2008 by roughly $30 million, and that time frame was at the height of the music/dance genre sales.”
Hardware had the more modest performance, only growing by 2 percent to reach 1.08 billion in sales.
The Nintendo DS managed to move more than 1.5 million units during the month of November, which is a little less than it managed in November 2009.
The Xbox 360 also performed well again, seeing a whopping increase of more than two thirds over last year to reach 1.37 million dollars in sales.
Sony has not released actual sales data for its PlayStation 3 and the NPD Group did not provide them, but sources suggest that sales are down by about a quarter.
The Nintendo Wii managed to sell 1.27 million units for the month of November, which is just a bit more than during the same period last year, with a big increase seen during the Thanksgiving period.
Sales of accessories, which include the Move and Kinect motion tracking systems, have reached 413.3 million dollars, largely driven by the Microsoft device, according to Anita Frazier.
Actual sales numbers have not been offered.