Nintendo Wii Sales Down 31.5% from Last Year

It looks like the recession has finally hit the gaming industry — PC Magazine is reporting that the sales of the Nintendo Wii are down 31.5% from last year.

According to Pachter, Microsoft sold approximately 332,800 Xbox 360 units, representing a year-to-year growth of 14.4 percent for the company. More than half of the systems sold were also bundled with Microsoft’s Kinect accessory.

Nintendo, on the other hand, found its sales down 31.5 percent compared to the same period of time last year. That’s a drop from 465,800 Wii consoles sold in January 2010 to 319,000 sold in January 2011. The company still leads the current console market with 34.5 million Wii units sold in the U.S., in total, with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 coming in second place at 25.8 million, followed by Sony’s PlayStation 3 at 15.7 million.

The PlayStation 3 experienced slight drops in sales between January 2010 and January 2011, only losing three percent of its total between the two years—276,900 consoles sold in January 2010 versus 267,000 in 2011.

Overall software sales also took a hit between the two compared years, dropping off five percent in total sales from January 2010’s $606.8 million to January 2011’s $576 million. The top game (physical media only) remained Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Black Ops, which debuted (and shot to the top of the charts) in November of last year.