(AP) -- An industry group says U.S. retail sales of video game consoles and software dropped 4 percent in January from a year earlier.
Total sales of game software, hardware and accessories, such as Microsoft Corp.'s Kinect motion-sensing controller, were $1.14 billion last month, market researcher NPD Group said Thursday. That's down from $1.18 billion in January 2010.
Hardware sales fell 8 percent to $324 million from $353.7 million, NPD said.
Software sales slipped 5 percent to $576 million from $606.8 million. Still, that's a smaller drop than what many analysts were expecting. The month's best-selling game was "Call of Duty: Black Ops" from Activision Blizzard Inc. "Just Dance 2" from Ubisoft came in at No. 2.
Sales of video game accessories rose 6 percent to $235.1 million.
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