NPD: July down one per cent

The US video games market suffered a slight one per cent year-on-year decrease in July, with a total value reaching $846.5m.

Hardware sales – driven by a great performance from the Xbox 360 Slim – were up 12 per cent at $313.8m, though software sales fell eight per cent to $403.3m.

That the Xbox 360 was the best-selling console is quite an achievement for Microsoft – it’s the first time that the machine has held that position since the release of Halo 3 nearly three years ago.

The console managed to beat both Wii and DS despite a slight decline compared to June. In total Xbox 360 sold 443.5k units, ahead of DS (398.4k) and Wii (253.9k). The PS3 sold 214.5k units and the PSP 84k. These numbers represent a sharp drop for Wii which sold 422.5k in June.

Since the launch of the Xbox 360 S Microsoft has now shifted almost 900k units in the US.

Year-to-date hardware sales see DS in the lead (3.469m) followed by Wii (2.738m) and Xbox 360 (2.339m) which still has its work cut out if it hopes to catch Nintendo’s home platform.

PS3 has shifted 1.805m units in 2010 and PSP 683k.

NPD doesn’t usually release PC games sales data but did add that Starcraft II was the month’s best-selling game, shifting 721k units and helping PC gaming to a 103 per cent year-on-year increase.

Starcraft II aside, the best-selling console game was EA’s NCAA Football 11 (368k on Xbox 360, 298k on PS3) with Crackdown 2 (208k) and Super Mario Galaxy 2 (193k) excelling. Warner’s LEGO Harry Potter (401k) also impressed and putting itself in a good position to stand out in the overall 2010 chart.