The bad economy is finally catching up to video games, right? Not yet, according to the latest sales figures.

U.S. video-game sales were up 13 percent to $1.33 billion in January compared with the same month a year ago, according to the industry-tracking NPD Group. Sales of just systems were up 17 percent. Nintendo boasted in a separate press release that it was largely responsible for the increase, and it’s hard to dispute that. Sales of the Wii console in January were up 148 percent over January 2008, with nearly 680,000 units sold; the plucky Nintendo DS was up almost 100 percent, with nearly 511,000 sold.  

Nintendo scored on the software side, too, claiming 20 of the top 30 games sold in January. Remarkably, five of the top 10 sellers were Nintendo titles that had been out for months and, in some cases, years. They include the No. 1 Wii Fit, as well as Wii Play (No. 2), Mario Kart Wii (No. 3), New Super Mario Bros. for DS ( No. 8 ) and Mario Kart DS (No. 9). It seems pretty clear that those figures reflect people getting a Wii or DS for Christmas and then going out and buying (probably with gift cards) the best games for the system.

Microsoft and Sony trailed in Nintendo’s dust in January. The Xbox 360 sold 309,000 units, according to NPD, with top 10 game titles of Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty: World at War, Skate 2 and Lord of the Rings: Conquest. The PlayStation 3 tallied sales of 203,200, ahead of the PSP at 172,300 and PS2 at 101,200. (I can’t believe people are still buying the PS2, but what a testament to its cheap price, huge — but no longer expanding — library and longevity.) There were no games for Sony’s systems in the top 10.

The final game among the top 10 sellers for January was Guitar Hero World Tour for — of course — the Wii.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 9:48 am and is filed under Video games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.