The powers and resources of the NPD, Enterbrain, and GfK Chart-Track have all come together and the results are in - Dragon Quest IX dominated the global sales charts spanning over three months ending September of this year. What's more amazing is that the DS-exclusive title has only been released in Japan. See how the others fared.

For the fifth consecutive month, the US gaming industry experiences a downward slip, this time with a 29% year-over-year decline to US$ 848.9 million. Details on July's NPD results are at the full article.

Let's head over to the gaming Mecca and see what our fellow gamers in Japan have been getting busy with. According to this latest report from Famitsu publisher, Enterbrain, the Pocket Monsters show some strength as Pokemon Fushigi no Dungeon: Sora no Tankentai tops the sales chart in the week of March 30th to April 26th. More in the full article.

Whos' Number 1 for Famitsu for 2008? All was revealed at the Famitsu Awards, and the Monster Hunters still proved to be the favorite as Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G takes the top spot as Game of the Year.

Brain food! While you're busy trying to avoid getting crunched by hordes of Majini, Capcom's busy crunching Resident Evil 5 sales figures by the hundreds of thousands: well, one and a half million, to be exact. Yes, the NPD software sales figures for the month of March have already been released, and in that report, we find RE5 on the Xbox 360 and  PS3 bringing home the bacon (and the meat, and the brains, and the guts...). See the full article for the breakdown on software sales.

The Xbox 360 version of Resident Evil 5 was still at the top of the heap last month in software sales. The game sold 938,000 units, almost 20% higher than the expected sales numbers. With the hardware and software sales now announced, Sony and Nintendo have also sent out their own statements about the March 2009 sales report. Both companies echoed the optimism Microsoft exhibited in their own statement.

At this rate, if all these bills being proposed get written into actual law, video game box art would be obsolete. In their place, it's just one big white label on the cover: warning warning danger warning! Following last week's proposal of having a huge list of warnings on game boxes (sodomy, rape, bestiality, incest, murder, etc.), a new bill now wants a warning label linking photosensitivity epilepsy and video games.

Outlining the future of the Spore franchise, Maxis has now revealed that new titles will be heading out. Four new installments are confirmed. If all DNA replication goes well, they may be out by this year. Other than that, there's also the possibility of eventually seeing Spore hit the PS3 and 360 - and the good thing is, if ever they do, they're definitely veering away from the "oh just port it from the PC version" scenario.

Activision Blizzard and Neversoft decided to yank custom tracks based on Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda from Guitar Hero: World Tour's (Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, and Wii) music-sharing service. The Nintendo favorites previously enjoyed status as some of the most popular songs available.

Enterbrain of Japan has finished tallying their results for the total hardware and software sales for the period of March 31 to September 28. This time period marks the first half of 2008's fiscal year in Japan.

So who's on top? If you're asking hardware, that'd be the PSP. Over one and a half million units sold, man! Meanwhile, on the software side of things, it's a different story.