U.S. sales of video game hardware and software rose 28 percent in December from a year earlier as holiday shoppers snapped up new consoles like Nintendo Co Ltd's top-selling Wii, market research firm NPD said on Thursday. But after setting a 43 percent pace for all of 2007, growth is expected to cool off this year as attention moves away from the transition to a new generation of hardware and more toward games.
"While I wouldn't count on similar growth in 2008, I would expect to see ... more growth proportionately coming from software sales," NPD analyst Anita Frazier said in written commentary on the data. "While we will continue to see strong hardware sales, particularly if prices come down again, the spotlight now turns from hardware to software."
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