Activision Tops in November Sales

Microsoft's Xbox 360, seen as the challenger to Sony and Nintendo, sold 770,000 boxes, compared with 366,000 in October.

But PS3 sales of picked up during the holiday season, as Sony sold 466,000 consoles in November compared with 121,000 a month earlier.

"The combination of the price cut and seasonal lift gave the PS3 the biggest October-to-November sales increase of any hardware platform," said Frazier.

Still, the older PS2 console found more buyers than its successor. Nearly 496,000 PS2s were sold last month, compared with 184,000 in October.

Sony also lagged behind Nintendo in handheld game systems. Sony sold 567,000 PlayStation Portables in November, up from 286,000 in October, while rival Nintendo's version, the DS, sold 1.53 million systems in November compared with 458,000 a month earlier.

Sales of video game accessories reached $243 million last month, up 52% from a year ago.

Overall industry sales, including hardware, software and accessories, reached $2.63 billion in November, up 52% compared with year-ago figures. Since the beginning of the year, the video-games industry has raked in $13.12 billion, vs. $8.76 billion for the same period in 2006.

Software sales for consoles jumped 75% to $1.1 billion in November, from $617 million during the same month a year ago.

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