Video Game Sales Up 23 Percent

Research firm NPD Group says that video game sales are up 23 percent for the first quarter of 2005 totaling more than $2.2 billion.

“Growth was lead by portable video game hardware, NPD said, with a 162 percent rise on a dollar basis. That came from the launch of two new handheld game players, Nintendo Co. Ltd.’s DS and Sony Corp.’s PlayStation Portable.

All categories were higher on both a dollar and unit basis, NPD said. The biggest was console games, at more than $1 billion in sales, a 7 percent growth rate. Most analysts expect about 5 percent growth for the year. “

Grand Turismo 4 for the Playstation 2 was the best selling game of quarter 1. Video game sales are expected to syrocket later this year with the introduction of new game consoles from Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony.

Source: Yahoo! News