According to the NPD Group's monthly sales report for the month of May, the US game industry sales dropped 5 percent year-on-year; however, a 4 percent gain in software helped in counterbalancing a whopping
20 percent year-over-year hit to the hardware market.

Going by the statistics forwarded by NPD, while the US game industry's total May sales worth $823.5 million spelled a 5 percent plunge, vis-a-vis the figures for the same month last year, and the hardware sales worth $241.5 million indicated a 20 percent fall; the software and accessory sales for the month stood at $466.3 million and $115.7 million - marking an increase of 4 and 3 percent respectively.

The May rankings of the game console bigwigs remained unchanged from their April rankings, even though Nintendo's Wii managed to do notably better while its DS fared slightly worse than the previous month. Together, these two Nintendo hardware platforms managed to touch over 300,000 in unit sales; while Microsoft and Sony consoles barely reached over 200,000 units individually.

Meanwhile, Top 10 games chart was populated by some new titles during May - with the hyped titles that marked their launch including Red Dead Redemption, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Alan Wake, and UFC 2010: Undisputed.

The biggest winner turned out to be Red Dead Redemption, which, together with second-ranking Super Mario Galaxy 2, made the maximum contribution to the software revenues for the month.