NPD January 09: Xbox 360 Sales Surge, PS3 Sales Slump

From PC World: "Even in these tough economic times...[the] increase in revenue...speaks to the continued strength of video games as one of the leading entertainment industries in the U.S.," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

Who's to blame for all that post-holiday revenue? "New consumers," suggests NPD.

"At this point in the console lifecycle, we would expect to see a greater percentage of total industry sales generated by software sales, but the continued strength in hardware sales is changing that scenario a bit," said Frazier, adding that the uptrend in hardware sales uptrend will have long term positive ramifications due to user base expansion.

It wasn't all celebratory bells and whistles, however. While the Xbox 360 (309k) raised its hardware profile by 33 percent over January 2008 (207k), both PlayStation 3 (203k) and PSP (172k) sales were down by 25 percent compared with January 2008's numbers (269k and 230k, respectively).

The PS2 unsurprisingly experienced the sharpest drop, falling nearly 62 points year-over-year to 101k units.

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