Even one of the strongest categories to hold up in the recession has taken a dive, as market researcher The NPD Group reports that vidgame sales were down 29% in July to US$848.9 million from US$1.19 billion from the same period in 2008.

Hardware sales have also slowed down for every platform, though with 538,900 Nintendo DS units sold, the handheld saw the highest sales for the month, and year-to-date.

Nintendo still ruled the SKU sales charts with the debut of Wii Sports Resort, packaged with peripheral add-on Wii MotionPlus, the follow-up to the successful Wii Sports. The title sold more than 508,000 units in its first month at retail. Rounding out rest of the top five are Wii Fit with Balance Board and Mario Kart with wheel.

Industry analyst Anita Frazier also notes that the music/dance genre saw the largest declines this year, with a drop of roughly US$390 million in revenues from the same time period last year.