December 26^th, 2001 (12:00am) - According to market information provider NPDFunworld, the total U.S. video game industry -- consisting of hardware, software, and accessories -- has generated $6.4 billion in revenue year-to-date, compared to $4.7 billion during the same time last year. The new generation of consoles took in the largest amount of revenue, showing an increase of 436 percent in dollar sales versus last year.

A 624 percent increase was experienced in November 2001, compared to November 2000. Almost 2.6 million next generation consoles were purchased last month, due in part to the launches of two new gaming consoles -- Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo GameCube.

Software sales skyrocketed at a dollar growth rate of 28 percent in the month of November, compared to last year, according to NPDFunworld. November launch titles, such as Halo from Microsoft and Luigi’s Mansion from Nintendo, drew in almost four percent of the console software unit sales. Both of these two best-selling games sold through at a rate of at least one game to every two consoles purchased. Microsoft’s launch portfolio of seven Xbox games represented 55 percent of the Xbox software unit sales and Nintendo’s initial release of two first-party GameCube games represented 41 percent of GameCube software unit sales.