According to the latest survey by the NPD, gaming has attracted a larger female audience in 2009 than in 2008, more significantly in consoles. The number of lady gamers out there increased by up to 4% both in "heavy portable" and "extreme games" as compared to last year. More after the jump.

This is a rather unique position we are in. The E3 is nearing, and yet we've got just about the biggest surge we've had the past couple of months. Okay, that might well be an exaggeration, but still. You gotta agree with me when I say it was a busy past week, yes? Rumors, confirmation of rumors, and surprising - yet at the same time not-so-surprising - NPD results for this month all proved to be the cherry on top for this game-filled, fun-filled week. Hmmm.. imagine all those cherries on top.... Dig in, then.

Now this be crazy! The April results from NPD show that the DS outsold all other platforms combined, thanks to its whopping one million units sold. Satoru Iwata, adopt me now.

After exceeding expectations last month, the NPD data for the month of March 2009 now shows a lot of dips in hardware sales. Has the video game industry's resilience to the economic crunch finally been broken?

Usually, the trend has been to experience a noticeable dip in the amount of news coming out the week before the GDC. However, this year's pre-event week proved to be a rather different one from those I've experienced in the past. Unexpectedly, but fortunately, there were a great deal of updates. It was a busy one, alright, and thank God you stuck with us throughout the week, making it such a blast!

Looks like February was a pretty good month for video game hardware, despite the ongoing lackluster economic performance worldwide. According to NPD's released data for last month, hardware "strongly outperformed market expectations", with every console strongly outperforming their respective expected sales.So the retailers' fear that more people will buy less games was not as apocalyptic as they thought, after all.

No big surprises in the NPD console charts for January 2009. The Nintendo consoles are still going strong, with the Wii and DS only swapping their positions from December. This time, the Wii is on top with 679,200 units sold while the DS is in the number two spot with 510,800.

The much-awaited figures from December 2008 are out, courtesy of the NPD Group. Nintendo dominates the hardware sales as usual with the DS and Wii, Xbox 360 sells twice as much as the PS3, and all the non-Nintendo platform games on the Top 10 are FPSs. Figures and more in the full article.

Leading market research company, the NPD Group, looked into the preferences of kids aged 2-14 and discovered that kids are becoming more inclined to acquire content in digital form than the tradition physical form. What's more, a greater slice of this age group prefers to play video games using their devices than listen to music. More inside.

The recession may have hooked its pincers into another victim. A report from the Electronic Playground is claiming that Electronic Arts has canceled the Need for Speed series.