Fueled by the success of Nintendo Co.’s Wii and Microsoft’s “Halo 3,” more video games were sold in the U.S. in 2007 than in any other year, with retail sales hitting $17.94 billion, according to the NPD Group.

The market researcher said total video game sales grew 43 percent, up from $12.53 billion in 2006. In December, historically the industry’s strongest month, Americans spent $4.82 billion on video games, up 28 percent from a year earlier and up 83 percent from $2.63 billion in November.

Video games sold well during the holidays even as jittery consumers were cutting back spending on clothes and other items.

Hardware sales jumped 54 percent to $7.04 billion in 2007, while software sales climbed 34 percent to $8.64 billion. In December, hardware sales rose 17 percent to $1.83 billion, and software sales grew 36 percent to $2.37 billion.

“I think the industry has become much more generally accepted as a mainstream profile

of entertainment by the last couple of years, and that sets it up well for future expansion,” NPD analyst Anita Frazier said in an e-mail.

Much of that growing acceptance has been attributed to the Wii, groundbreaking when it launched in 2006 for its motion-sensitive controller that lets players imitate movements for bowling, tennis or sword-fighting.

Even so, the portable Nintendo DS was by far the year’s best-selling gaming system with 8.5 million units sold, 2.5 million of them in December. In short supply all year, the Wii still sold 6.3 million units, 1.4 million of them last month.

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said the company expects to sell more Wiis that year than it did in 2007. To deal with the high demand, Nintendo raised Wii production twice since last April, the last day to 1.8 million units a month. Though the consoles are still selling out…

Orginal post by Top Tech News