Game Sales

February video game sales suffered another double-digit monthly decline, plunging 20% to $1.06 billion, down from $1.33 billion in February 2011. Sales of software titles struggled the most, dropping 24.4% to $464.4 million last month, down from $601.4 million for the same period last year. Sales of the PlayStation Vita, Sony's Corp.'s latest portable game console — introduced in the U.S. on Feb. 22 — helped to cushion the overall decline in hardware sales last month, but not enough to prevent an 18% decline in sales of consoles, including the Nintendo Wii. Sales of the top 10 titles listed below accounted for 78% of total game sales in terms of units.

Here's your fortunate-son Friday roundup of consumer news from around the Web: --Are there better cities for singles? Our friends at Kiplinger's Personal Finance crunched the numbers and found that there are, based on such stats as how many households are single versus married, whether those households are affluent enough to date, and just what a date might cost. The top city in the country to be single turns out to be Ann Arbor, Mich. More than half of the city's population is single, thanks in part to proximity to the University of Michigan.

Spurned by consumers who now favor tablets, smartphones and higher-definition consoles,Nintendo Co.said it will probably post a loss in its current fiscal year - its first in at least three decades. The Japanese video game company said Thursday that it expected to lose $839.4 million in the fiscal year that ends March 31 on $8.5 billion in revenue, 16.5% lower than it had projected in October. The revised forecast was far worse than many had predicted. Analysts polled by Thomson One had projected the company to lose $293.1 million on revenue of $9.8 billion in its fiscal year that will end March 31. It would be the first annual net loss since 1981, when Nintendo began disclosing its financial performance.

Video game software sales rebounded in November, a crucial month for the industry as gift buying takes off in the weeks leading up to the holidays. Sales of games sold as discs jumped 15% to $1.67 billion last month compared with a year earlier, the most that's been rung up for a November sales period, according to a report from market research firm NPD Group Inc. "Content sales grew substantially thanks to a great slate of new titles," said Anita Frazier, NPD's game analyst.

This year, before the pumpkin pie and turkey gravy even hit the Thanksgiving table, Reili Waniss got a head start on her perennial New Year's resolution to lose weight and get fit. She did it with a video game called Zumba Fitness 2, which she bought this summer and began playing at home while her twin toddlers napped. She lost 32 pounds in 4 months, a third of the way to shedding the 100 pounds she gained while pregnant. "It's crazy, but I've totally fallen in love with this game," said the 31-year-old lab technician from Rancho Santa Margarita.

This is not a high scoring year for video games. With total revenue for physical game sales up only 1% at just over $1 billion in October, the business probably will end the year flat to down 2% compared with 2010, according to researchers at NPD Group Inc. The once-booming industry's flat-lining is attributed to consumers not only spending less money in the tough economy , but investing more time in fewer games that they play repeatedly online...

Continued consumer reluctance to spend and a light release schedule sent video game retail sales tumbling in August for the fourth consecutive month and the ninth time in the last 12 months, according to the market research firm NPD Group Inc. Console game sales plummeted 34% last month to $264.8 million compared with $403.5 million in August 2010, an NPD report released late Thursday afternoon said. Sales of console hardware slipped 12% to $249.4 billion, compared with $282.9 billion last year.

Amazon.com Inc. is sticking by its vow not to collect California sales tax on Internet purchases — and state officials must decide what to do about it. But the showdown over the new tax collection law that took effect Friday could be months away. Companies don't send the taxes to the state until the end of each quarter, which means the California Board of Equalization won't know officially about Amazon's refusal to collect them until Oct. 1. The tax-collecting agency said Amazon accounts for about half the Internet sales in California from large out-of-state firms that, prior to the new law, did not have to collect sales tax for the state.