Gaming industry rakes in record $21bn for 2008
Nintendo's dominance of the console gaming market continued in December, according to sales figures collected by the NPD Group. The Wii set a new monthly record as consumers picked up some 2.15 million consoles in December alone. The good news continued for Nintendo; its portable gaming platform, the DS, also set a one-month sales record with more than 3 million units moving off of store shelves.
"The [Nintendo DS] captures the top spot for hardware sales this month, marking the first time that any hardware system has sold in excess of 3 million units in any single month. The record for single-month console system sales still belongs to the [PlayStation 2] which sold 2.7 million units in December 2002," noted Anita Frazier, an NPD industry analyst.
The Wii was not the only winner in the last month of 2008. Both Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 saw sales increase, selling 1.44 million and 726,000 units, respectively.
December came in as the first time that revenue for the video game console industry surpassed US$5 billion in any single month. To put the monthly total into perspective, sales for the entire year of 1997 were $5.1 billion.
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