U.S. sales of Nintendo Co.'s Wii video-game console rose 37 percent in September as the industry overall — including hardware and games — shrank for the first time in more than two years.
Consumers purchased 687,000 Wii players, Port Washington, N.Y.-based NPD Group Inc. said Thursday in an e-mailed statement, an increase from 501,000 a year earlier. Total industry sales fell 7 percent to $1.27 billion, NPD said.
The industry's overall decline reflects the absence of a title comparable with "Halo 3," released by Microsoft Corp. in September 2007. Consumers bought 3.3 million copies of the game, helping to lift industry sales 75 percent, NPD analyst Anita Frazier said in an e-mailed statement.