It seems November was a blessed month for the gaming industry, in terms of both software and hardware sales. For Nintendo, the last month proved to be a real bonanza, as its Wii console was sold in no less than 2.04 million units. Which exceeds all expectations, even the most optimistic ones.

Wedbush Morgan had already predicted several days ago that the Wii would skyrocket to a sales number of almost 1.4 million. And to think that last year, Nintendo got a number of 981,000 units sold for its motion sensor video game console – now that’s quite a drastic curve in the charts. In fact, the Wii managed to beat its hand-held friendly competitor, the Nintendo DS, which was the reigning chart champion; even so, the DS sold in 1.57 million units -  again, a number that elongated the smile on the company’s family-friendly face.

Nintendo’s staggering performances aside, November will be fondly remembered by CEOs from Microsoft and Sony as well, because they didn’t do so bad either. The Xbox 360 sold 836,000 units, so we’re talking about a 3-year-old console with a lot of spunk here; and two of its games, Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: World at War got the gold and silver medals on the gaming software podium, with sales of 1.6 million and 1.41 million respectively.

And even if Sony didn’t have the same spectacular numbers to show for themselves in November, they still managed to sell 378,000 units of their acclaimed PlayStation 3, which makes it a grand sales total of 6.1 million for the U.S. only. 

Why is this happening when, in other industries, sales have been dwindling due to the already classical reason of the world financial crisis? NPD’s Anita Frazier explains: “One reason for the continued strength of the industry compared to other forms of entertainment comes from a number of sources. Certainly, the expanded audience for gaming due to the availability of a wider variety of compelling content is a strong contributor.”

In other words, video games and the machines that run them are definitely crysisproof.