Sales of Sony PlayStation Portables and Nintendo DS handhelds saved the US games market last year, pushing total game industry sales (not including PC games) up 6% to a record high $10.5 billion, according to NPD Research. However, console sales were down 3% by value, while console game sales fell 12% by value, according to a Reuters story.
Combined unit sales of Sony's PlayStation 2, Microsoft Corp.'s original Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube current-generation consoles fell more than 19% to 33.5 million in 2005, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter told Reuters.
He added that total console and hand-held game unit sales were 190.3 million in the United States in 2005, down 6.3%.
"You need people to buy more stuff. This is a bad downturn," Pachter said.
NPD reckons Microsoft "sold 600,000 of its new Xbox 360 video game consoles in the United States," reports another Reuters story.
