Video Game manufacturers earning a fortune

November saw a handsome increase in the video games sales in U.S. With the Christmas and New Year coming, the manufacturers are very optimistic of further increase.

This holiday season is turning out to be very busy for the video manufacturers as the increased sales in November have started this season on a very positive note.

According to market researcher NPD Group, the video game software sales increased by almost 62%, touching the sales figures of $1.3 billion, whereas the sales of the industry also increased by 52% on the whole. These sales are expected to increase with the Christmas and New Year coming ahead.

Console hardware in particular contributed around $771 million (up 49 percent) and console software jumped a whopping 75 percent to $1.1 billion.

Nintendo was still the market leader with its Wii gaming console, holding the No. 1 spot by selling 981,000 copies in November. The Wii had earlier sold 519,000 copies in October. Following it was Microsoft's Xbox 360 that last month sold 770,000 units which is more than double of 366,000 units in October.

The profits of high sales are not only restricted to the companies as the companies are passing on the profits to consumers by the means of price reduction. Sony reduced the prices of PlayStation 3 from $600 to $399. Sony claims it sold 466,000 PS3 consoles in November, compared to 121,000 units in October.

"The demand is so high (for the Wii), it's been jaw-dropping for us," said Perrin Kaplan, a vice president with Redmond-based Nintendo of America."Production is ramped up as much as we can get it. ... People are still able to find Wii’s, for sure, they just have to be really diligent," he added.

These figures are for the whole month and not for the Thanksgiving week as NPD doesn't publicly break down the numbers by week. However, key manufacturers like Microsoft claim that there sales jumped by the ratio of 2:1 in the Thanksgiving week. Seeing this, the companies are even more optimistic of increasing sales on Christmas.

The top selling game for the month was Activision Inc.'s "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare", which is manufactured for the Xbox 360. It sold 1.57 million units, followed by "Super Mario Galaxy" for the Wii, with 1.12 million units. Ubisoft's "Assasin's Creed" for the Xbox 360 followed with 980,000 units.