Console Sales Bolster Year's Game Sales by 43%

Industry watchers NPD gave Shacknews the North American game industry stats for August today, highlighted by $8.02 billion in overall year-to-date sales--a 43.0% increase over last year's period from January through August. Home console sales saw the most drastic increase during the past month, with a 152.1% year-over-year increase in August from sales of $302 million, bringing year-to-date home console sales 108.0% higher than in 2006. Nintendo's recently crowned champion of worldwide sales unsurprisingly took the top spot for North American home console sales, as the Wii sold 403,600 units in August. Microsoft's Xbox 360 came in second with 276,700 units sold, followed by Sony's last-gen PlayStation 2 with 202,000, and capped off by the PlayStation 3's 130,600. Regarding handheld sales, portable game hardware revenues for August were $83 million, up just 5.5% year-over-year. Though year-to-date sales of portables are still well ahead of 2006 at $832 million, a 20.5% increase. Nintendo sold 383,300 DS consoles in North America in August, more than twice the 151,200 PSPs sold.