SCEE had very positive things to say about the performance of PlayStation Move in Europe. According to Sony, Move sold around 1.5 million units since its launch in September. In North America, Sony has not divulged sales figures for PlayStation. Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter seems to know why.

The August 2010 NPD numbers are in. These industry sales numbers are dated from August 1, 2010 to August 28, 2010. There aren’t a whole lot of surprises here. The top two games of the month are Madden 11 for the Xbox 360 and PS3. The Xbox 360 is also the top selling console of the month with over 356,000 units sold.

The July NPD’s were released last week. The one thing we can take away from the results were that software sales saw a slump and the Xbox 360 S helped consoles sales tremendously. As we approach the holiday season, more big name games are scheduled to released. Before the end of the year we will see Call of Duty: Black Ops, Halo: Reach, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and LittleBigPlanet 2 all released very close to each other. However EEDAR (Electronic Entertainment Design and Research) analyst Jesse Divnich believes it will take more than software sales to recover from the sales slump of the summer.

A recent study by consumer research company NPD Group revealed that hardcore gamers (labeled “Extreme Gamers” in their study) play an average of 48.5 hours in a week.

While this information has officially entered WTF Land, on the bright side, overall US gamers ages two and up play an average of 13 hours, a slight bump from 12.3 hours back in 2009.

The DS has had three redesigns since its introduction in 2004. Every new iteration from the DS Lite to the DSi XL has given the DS a significant boost in sales. This ensures the DS is always on the minds of gamers. Celebrity endorsements and embracing the casual gamers also paid huge dividends to the success of the DS.

It’s reasonable to believe Wii Play sold 11.1 million copies in the US because the bundle costs the same or less than a Wii Remote by itself. The runner ups in NPD’s list of highest selling non-PC games however, are less rage inducing.

NPD Group reports that two-thirds of Americans now game through social networks, cellphones, and oh yeah, video game consoles. And six out of ten households have at least one game console. In spite of those numbers, the bad economy slowed down overall game sales. Game and system sales are expected to drop below 2008′s record $21.3 billion. That will mark the first sales drop since 2004, and it’s happening despite Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all slashing console prices.

Independent research company NPD Group has released its US video game sales numbers for May 2009.

The best selling game for the month was THQ’s new release, UFC Undisputed 2009 for Xbox 360 (the PS3 release came in fourth).

Six Wii games made the chart followed closely by the Xbox 360 and DS with five games each. Only three PS3 games made the list, although two were in the top five, and not a single PSP, PS2 or PC/Mac game made the Top 20.

The oldest game on the chart for the month is Mario Kart DS release in November 2005 coming in at number 12, down from eighth place in April 2009. Eight games released in May 2009 made the list.

It’s hard to tell from all the closures, layoffs and other bad financial info we talk about all day but according to research firm NPD Group, the video game industry pulled down huge profits in 2008.

According to NPD’s stats, computer, video game and peripheral sales added up to $21 billion in 2008 with entertainment software comprising up to $11.7 billion of that. That’s a jump of more than 23 percent from 2007, although it probably does little to console the numerous people in the industry that lost jobs recently.

Also interesting to note is that more than half of those software sales are considered…

Nothing can stop the Mario-driven money train known as Nintendo.

The company proved that at the end of 2008 when the Wii sold more than 2 million units in the month of November alone.

Before the NPD numbers for December 2008 are released, Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR) analyst Jesse Divnich is predicting the games industry has made $2.7 billion in sales in December 2009 with the Wii and DS accounting for half of that number. Simply put, if it weren’t for Nintendo the video game industry would have taken a brutal beating compliments of the weakening economy.

Divnich believes those sales prove a…