• Reuters, Friday, April 17, 2009 12:15 PM

The video game business has been noted for its resilience during the economic crisis, but sales finally showed declines in March, falling 17% year-over-year to $1.43 billion, research group NPD said on Thursday. Software sales were $792.8 million (down 17%), while hardware sales were $455.6 million (down 18%).

Analysts blamed the big drop on an unusually stellar March 2008, which saw a major game release in "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" for the Nintendo Wii. "March was just such an outsized month last year," Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter said, although he added that the data indicates some weakness in the market, and that he expects April sales to be flat.

Once again, Nintendo's Wii won the month, with sales of 601,000 units, while the Xbox was No. 2 with 330,000 units, followed by Sony's PlayStation 3, with 218,000 unites. "If there was one area that surprised me this month, it was hardware sales," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier said in a statement. "While it's not unusual for March hardware sales to be lower than February, I thought we'd see higher unit sales on most platforms." For the first quarter of 2009 as a whole, video game sales were flat at $4.25 billion.

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