Nintendo may not have the most technologically powerful home console in this generation, but they are definitely top dog when it comes to sales. In North America, the company has not one, not two, but three games in the decade's top five best selling games list, including the one at the top spot.

Although working for a games company such as Nintendo seems like a dream job for every gamer, it does get old, especially if you have other interests you want to pursue. Such is what happened to Wii Fit designer Motoi Okayama, who has left the company to get going on his dream of starting up his own website dedicated to a gallery of action figure pictures.

The year is already drawing to a close, and Gamasutra reveals the top games of the year so far based on their research. See how 2007 sales compare to 2008's so far, and check out the top earners for 2008. Did your bets make it to the charts? Find out in the full article.

Reports have come in that the PC version of Funcom's Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (the Xbox 360 version is still in the works) has dethroned Grand Theft Auto 4 (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3) from the sales list in both Germany and Sweden. However, both games were not able to stand up to the might of Wii Play in Spain. Care to find out more? Check out the full article.

The Wii goes to the Oscars! Jon Stewart, who is fond of inserting pop culture references in The Daily Show, recently hosted the 2008 Academy Awards. After one of the commercial breaks, the show continued with Stewart playing Wii Sports on the Oscar's big screen. If anyone needed a sign to see how popular the Wii has gotten, this would probably be it. Check out the video in the full article.

Eager to find out which console or title sold the most this holiday season? How about for the entire year of 2007? Wonder no more as we give you the latest batch of stats from NPD that's not only plump, but healthier than the average sales charts. Check out the numbers and why you should care about them in the full article.

simExchange's Jesse Divnich has something interesting to tell: as it turns out, Nintendo's Wii Play may turn out to be the Number One game throughout the console's lifetime. Forget Super Mario Galaxy or even Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Wii Play is going to be THE game. Details in the full article.

Media Create's software sales numbers for the year ending December 2, 2007 show how third party publishers for the Nintendo Wii barely come close to the success of Nintendo titles. Even Square Enix, Capcom, and Konami Digital couldn't touch Ninty's sales.

Find out why at the full article.

Looks like Michael Pachter was right as August's results for console sales report that the Xbox 360 has surged, selling almost 100,000 more units than it did last July, over than what Pachter predicted. The NPD group also reports that the Wii still dominates the charts, and the Nintendo DS is still the more popular handheld.

All in all, the industry is bulking up. Last July console and software sales reached US$ 925.5 million, and this month it rose to US$ 933 million. A bit more and it truly will be a billion dollar industry. It's up 43% from August last year, when the industry was already strong at US$ 669 billion.

PS3 and PSP sales declined this month. PS3 sales slipped about 29,000 units in sales from last month. The PSP slipped more than 50,000 units in sales, but this is most likely in anticipation for the PSP Slim. The Wii and DS also declined a bit this month even though they're still on top.

NPD Analyst Anita Frazier describes Sony's current situation as "concerning, and the window for [Sony] turning the story around is certainly getting narrower." Here's a complete list of hardware sales this month:

• Nintendo Wii - 403,600 (4.0 million)
• Nintendo DS - 383,300 (12.7 million)
• Xbox 360 - 276,700 (6.3 million)
• PlayStation 2 - 202,000 (39.1 million)
• PlayStation Portable - 151,200 (8.3 million)
• PlayStation 3 - 130,600 (1.75 million)

Software sales are up 21% from last year, raising the bar to US$ 2.8 billion. Madden 08 ruled last August as the most popular game on both the Xbox 360 and the PS2, while the PS3 version is on fourth place. Bioshock sits comfortably on third place while Wii Play is on fifth. No DS games on Top 10 for August though.

Looks like July saw a lot of excitement for the video game industry. According to the latest reports from the NPD Group, not only did the Wii sell more than the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 did combined, but total industry sales also shot up a whopping 37% to US$ 925.5 million.

 

Nintendo is far ahead of the group with the Wii and the DS for July. The Wii sold 425,000 consoles for July. Sony's PlayStation 3 also did pretty well, selling 159,000 units, almost catching up to the Xbox 360 which sold 170,000 units. The PlayStation 2 is still going strong, selling 222,000 units. The Nintendo DS sold 405,000 units, twice as much as the PSP which sold 214,000 units. Console sales accounted for US$ 286 million for the video game industry's revenues.

July also saw the rise of NCAA Football 08, the top selling game for that month totalling 789k units sold. The 360 version is the top selling game across all consoles, followed by Guitar Hero Encore Rocks the 80s. In third is Wii Play. All in all, game sales gave the industry US$ 313.2 million in revenues.

NPD analyst Anita Frazier has some interesting insights on the sales results for July. She explains that price cuts certainly played a major part, but it wasn't the only factor. "By far the most significant purchase motivator is the availability of desired content and that will play into hardware sales more than anything else," she said.

Going more into this, Frazier explains how Grand Theft Auto IV plays into sales. GTA IV remains to be one of the most highly anticipated games for the PS3 and 360 and whose release date was unfortunately delayed. Frazier explains:

GTA IV was certainly eagerly awaited by fans, but at the most macro-level for the industry, I don't think its postponement will have that big an impact on total industry dollar sales once everything is tallied for the year. [...] There are other very big games still to come that will really smooth over any hole left from GTA IV moving to 2008. What I really think is that 2008 will benefit from GTA IV because it will be no small task for the industry [in 2008] to measure up to this year's sales.