U.S. Video Game Sales Growth Slowed in Augu

NPD finds that sales of video games in the United States showed a 9 percent year-on-year increase...marking the smallest monthly sales growth in two years.

Research firm NPD has released its figures for U.S. video game sales during the month of August, finding that game sales grew by 9 percent compared to August of 2007 to a total of $1.08 billion for the month. That’s the good news: the perhaps not-so-good news is that means August of 2008 marked the smallest monthly increase in U.S. video game sales in over two years.

The top-selling title for the month with EA’s Madden NFL 09, which hit the market August 1 and has so far sold a million units on the Xbox 360, 643,000 units for the PS3, and almost 425,000 units for the PS2. Among consoles, the Nintendo Wii remained the big winner, selling 453,000 units in the United States during the month, compared to 195,200 Xbox 360s and 185,400 PS3s sold during the same period. Nintendo managed to sell over 518,000 Nintendo DS handheld units, and Sony moved 253,000 PlayStation Portables.

Despite August of 2008 being the first month in the last 27 months the video game industry has seen growth under 10 percent, NPD isn’t worried about the industry’s short term revenue: with the end-of-year holiday season set to start up and Microsoft cutting the price on the Xbox 360 (with one unit now cheaper than the Wii), September should be looking up.