During February video games sales dropped 15% in the United States. Most credit goes to a large drop in sales of Nintendo Wiis after their post-holiday shortage, and therefore a continuation of the normal post-holiday gloom in the video game market as a whole.

Even with big name titles like Bioshock 2, market performance did not meet expectations. Bioshock 2 arguably helped Xbox 360 sales take the lead in February. The down and dirty information is below.

Here’s the February 2010 hardware sales breakdown, with growth compared to February 2009.

Sales - Item - % change

The average number of hours spent per week on online gaming is up 10 percent, to 8 hours a week, according to the results of a study released by the NPD Group today.

"While the percentage of the population that reports playing games has declined slightly, this study details other metrics which point to both stability and growth in both online and offline gaming," said Anita Frazier, industry analyst, The NPD Group.

The PC remains the most-used system for online gaming, according to the report, with 85 percent of online gamers reporting using a PC for online gaming activities.

June's release of The Sims 3 bested World of Warcraft for the crown of 2009's best selling PC game, according to numbers released today by the NPD Group. Modern Warfare 2, despite a November release, was a strong fifth.

Dragon Age: Origins also saw a November release and also made the top 10, at No. 9. It was one of five games from 2009 to do so in a sector where titles have a longer sales lifespan than on consoles.

The NPD Group published a report today showing that game buyers in the United States get their game info from word of mouth, playing friend's games, Magazine and online ads. But somewhat more interesting is the platform crossover makeup of those surveyed.

PORT WASHINGTON, NEW YORK, September 14, 2009 - According to Gaming Device Profiles, a series of new platform-specific reports from leading market research company, The NPD Group, 41 percent of all gamers report that they rely on word of mouth to obtain information on video games.

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Nintendo's Wii Sports Resort was the bestselling video game in the U.S. last month, moving more than a half million copies—and Wii MotionPlus add-ons—with one exception. It was actually outsold by EA Sports NCAA Football 10.*

* Combined, that is. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of this year's NCAA Football joined forces to sell over 613,000 copies, besting Wii Sports Resort in multi-SKU semantics. Across all platforms, the NPD Group says, EA Sports' college footballer moved over 689,000 units. I smell sequel!

The line up is, like most months, Nintendo platform heavy. Seven of the top ten games are Wii or Nintendo DS titles, including plenty of evergreen entries like New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart Wii.
Complete numbers and hardware after the break..