The US retail videogame market shrank by 21 per cent in December, according to market research firm NPD Group.
Total videogame sales at retail in December were $3.99 billion (£2.6 billion), down from $5.07 billion (£3.3 billion) in December 2010. That's largely down to hardware sales, which fell 28 per cent, and accessories, sales of which were down 27 per cent. Software sales fell 14 per cent year on year.
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was the best-selling game of the month, ahead of Just Dance 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which were also the best-selling games of the year.
It means that total retail takings in 2011 were down 8 per cent year on year, to $17.02 billion (£11.1 billion). Hardware and accessories sales both fell 11 per cent, with software sales down 6 per cent.
NPD analyst Anita Frazier sounded a familiar refrain: admitting that, with the increasing rise of digital distribution of games, retail performance paints an incomplete picture of the state of the US videogame market. She does, however, admit that December's results were an unwelcome surprise.
"December was very rough," she said. "Because of the great slate of content that came to market during the fourth quarter, I had expected December to represent a larger portion of total-year sales. This year, December accounted for just 23 per cent of annual sales, while the average for the past ten years has been 28."
Despite the decline in hardware, Frazier points out it was a good year for Xbox 360 and PS3, with combined sales up five per cent year on year and Microsoft's console accounting for 40 per cent of sales. In December, only Wii and 3DS saw their sales increase from the previous month - highly unusual in the busiest month of the year.