New York - US retail sales of new videogame hardware, software and accessories fell for the ninth straight month in August, according to research firm NPD Group.
Overall sales fell 20 percent to $515.6 million.
Software sales - the videogames themselves excluding PC titles - fell nine percent from a year earlier to $237.7 million. Sales of hardware such as Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 fell 39 percent to $150.6 million. Accessories slid seven percent to $127.3 million.
The study from NPD Group tracks sales of new physical products - about 50 percent of the total spending. Excluded are sales of used games and rentals as well as digital and social-network spending. The research firm estimates that when including these, Americans spent $989 million on games in August.
NPD also listed the top-selling games in August:
1. Darksiders II (THQ )
2. New Super Mario Bros 2 (Nintendo)
3. Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (Square Enix)
4. NCAA Football 13 (Electronic Arts)
5. Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes (Time Warners Warner Bros)
6. Sleeping Dogs (Square Enix)
7. Transformers: Fall of Cybertron (Activision Blizzard)
8. Batman: Arkham City (Warner Bros)
9. Call Of Duty: Black Ops”(Activision Blizzard)
10. The Amazing Spider-Man (Activision Blizzard) - Sapa-AP