The drop marks the 11th straight month of declining sales for physical game products. Many gamers are waiting for big holiday releases such as Activision Blizzard Inc.'s "Call of Duty: Black Ops II."
The NPD Group said Thursday that sales fell to $755.5 million from $1 billion a year earlier.
Sales of video games themselves, excluding PC titles, fell 25 percent to $432.6 million. Sales of hardware such as Microsoft's Xbox 360 fell 37 percent to $187.3 million. Sales of accessories, meanwhile, grew 5 percent to $135.6 million.
NPD estimates that retail sales account for about half of all video game spending. The rest is downloads, apps and the like.
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