The launch of the 3DS 
was a certifiable hit — but not a grand slam.
According to data released by sales tracking group NPD, the first-week sales of Nintendo’s new handheld system beat out the first-week sales of its predecessor, the DS, thanks to a price tag that was $100 higher. Unfortunately, that price tag also might have kept some from buying it: just under 400,000 3DS units were sold in its first week, about 100,000 units short of the original DS when it launched in November of 2004.
The good news is Nintendo has a hit with the 3DS. The bad news is … well, pretty much everything else.
Despite a strong launch for the handheld device, retail software sales were off 16 percent in March, according to The NPD Group, which gathers sales data for the industry. That’s a lot more than analysts were expecting to see. (The general consensus on Wall Street was a decline of between 8-10 percent.)
Veteran game journalist and Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris 
examines NPD’s moves to limit media access to U.S. video game sales figures, stating NPD “could be undercutting its own relevancy.”
I get why The NPD Group has been clamping down on distribution of its data recently. I really do.
But I’m starting to worry that as the company keeps an eye on its bottom line, it could be undercutting its own relevancy at a time when it’s already under assault.
Gamers went on a buying spree in February, shocking 
analysts and rocketing the video games industry into positive sales territory for the first time in over two years.
Buoyed by an unexpected 10 percent jump in hardware sales and a 22 percent surge in peripherals (led by Microsoft’s record-setting Kinect), video game industry sales are now 4 percent above where they were a year ago year to date, according to the NPD Group.
The video game industry pulled a rabbit out of its 
hat in February – and that rabbit looked a lot like an Xbox 360.
A surprise 10 percent jump in hardware sales and a 22 percent increase in peripheral sales not only led the industry to an increase over the February 2010 numbers, but put it in positive year-over-year country as well, according to data from the NPD Group.
It has been two years since the video 
game industry has seen positive growth — and from the looks of things, it may not see it in 2011, either.
Game software sales were down 5 percent last month as compared to the same period in 2010, according to figures released today by the NPD Group. Hardware sales were even worse, slumping 8 percent.
2011 isn’t looking much better 
than 2010 or 2009 for retail sales of video games.
Despite comparing with weak numbers from a year ago, game software sales were down 5 percent last month versus 12 months earlier, coming in at $576 million, according to NPD Group, which tracks the industry. Overall, the industry was down 6 percent, dragged lower by continued weakness in the hardware category.
The bad news is video game sales 
continued on their downward trajectory in January. The good news is it was nowhere near as bad as analysts were expecting.
Game sales fell 5 percent last month as compared to the same period in 2010, according to the NPD Group. That’s considerably better than the 11 percent some industry observers had predicted.
After two consistent years of negative 
growth, investors in the video game industry are hoping for things to start turning around in 2011, but they may have to wait a little longer for that to happen.
Analysts expect software sales in January, which will be announced after the market closes Thursday, to be well off of last year’s pace, as a lack of big titles and the traditional post-holiday slump drag down the retail sector.
For the second year in a row, retail sales were down in the video game industry — the first time it has recorded negative growth in back to back years.
The industry, as a whole, was down 6 percent compared to the 2009 figures, with sales of $18.58 billion. Software sales, which investors consider the best barometer of the industry’s health, were down 6 percent as well to $9.36 billion. (Adding in PC sales, the amount climbed to $10.1 billion, a 5 percent drop from last year.)
Chris Morris: Journalist 