EA's 'Madden' Game Scores Big

PS3 sales have increased 61% since the company announced a $100 price cut in July for the 60-gigabyte model, bringing down its cost to $499, said Sony. The company sold 159,000 PS3s in July.

Still, the Wii and Xbox 360 console have little to fear just yet. Nintendo sold 403,600 Wiis last month, giving the company an installed base of 4 million devices. Microsoft sold 276,700 Xbox 360s in August, reaching a base of 6.3 million devices.

Sony's older PlayStation 2 console continued to sell well. Gamers bought 202,000 PS2s during the month, helping the system reach an installed base of 39.1 million users.

Overall video-game industry sales, including hardware, software and accessories, grew 46.4%, or $993 million, in August to $8.02 billion.

Video-game hardware sales in the month rose 94.1% to $384 million from $198 million in August 2006.

Consoles sales drove much of the growth, with console hardware up nearly 152.1% to $302 million.

Sony's sold 151,200 PlayStation Portables, its handheld gaming device, and Nintendo's version, the DS, sold 383,300 devices.

Sales of games software, including games for console and handheld devices, were up 22.5% during the month to $488 million, while sales of game accessories rose 47.1% to $121 million.