According to the latest report released by The NPD Group, the research company that tracks the gaming sales in the US, August was the weakest month of the year. Apparently, the slowing U.S. economy made the sales for video games consoles to go down and be slower than expected.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 slipped 5% to 195,200 units and the Play Station 3 from Sony fell 18% to 185,400 units. More important, the Wii units from Nintendo came down to 18% from July, selling only 453,000.

The NPD Group said that the sale of gaming software in the U.S. rose only to 13% from the same period last year. Moreover, this is a small percentage if looking to the analysts’ expectations of 20% to 25%. The NPD reports showed that this month has had the lowest sales since January.

Jeetil Patel, an analyst at the Deutsche Bank, said that was all for the power of the video games. "After starting off with roughly 40% to 50% growth in the first six months, August video game sales came back down to reality with a hard dose of consumer spending woes," Patel told The Wall Street Journal.

Analysts say that the weakening economy is what’s causing this entire drop in sales. The Wii console from Nintendo had its weakest unit sales in six months. The shares of video games companies “have been under pressure for some time due to just such fears,” as Todd Mitchell of Kaufman Bros. said.

Mitchell also added that he thought that the companies will remain under pressure in the near term “as investors adjust their expectations downward.”

The July sales of game software reported a gain of $591 million and the August sales reported only $550 million, as the NPD released data showed. Still, Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan stated that because of the hurricanes, political issues and the Olympic Games, the consumer were “distracted.” He does not foresee such a black future for the video game consoles.

Yet, one video game did sell quite well: “Madden NFL 09” from EA Games showed that football lovers never die. “Madden” sold more than 2.18 million units in August.

However, the sales could improve especially since Microsoft has decided to cut the prices of its two-year old gaming console.

Earlier this month, the Redmond-based company announced that the Xbox 360 Arcade, which sells without hard drive, will be priced at only $199, well below Nintendo Wii, which was until now the cheapest gaming console available. The prices of Xbox 360 Pro and Xbox 360 were cut as well.

Few days ago, Microsoft noted that since the price cuts, the sales of Xbox 360 have doubled, but the company didn’t released any details of which model and exact sales figures.

The price cuts were announced after at E3 Expo, Microsoft announced its intention to make Xbox 360 more attractive to casual gamers. Because the price cuts were announced in September, we will have to wait for the next NPD report to see exactly how they influenced the Xbox 360 sales.