On the whole, industry sales took a 4 percent dive in October, sales tracking firm NPD revealed today. While the decline stems from a drop-off in hardware purchases, Xbox 360 sales were up over last October, with Major Nelson tweeting that unit sales hit 325,000.

“The best-selling hardware system for the month was the Nintendo DS, while the Xbox 360 was the only platform to realize unit sales improvement over last October,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier. She added, “While the PS3 overall did not experience an increase from September to October, the PS3 bundle with Move experienced a 15% increase over September 2010.”

On the software side of the spectrum, sales perked up by 6 percent over last October. Fallout: New Vegas led the charge with 679,000 units sold on Xbox 360 alone.

Breakdown is below. We’ll update as more numbers come in from platform holders.

Oct ’10 – Hardware Sales

Xbox 360 – 325K

Oct ’10 – Top 10 Games – sorted by unit sales rank

* NBA 2K11 (360, PS3, PS2, PSP, WII, PC)
* Fallout: New Vegas **(360, PS3, PC)
* Medal of Honor **(360, PS3, PC)
* Fable III **(360)
* Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II **(360, PS3, WII, PC, NDS)
* Halo: Reach **(360)
* Just Dance 2 (WII)
* FIFA Soccer 11 (PS3, 360, WII, PS2, PSP, NDS, PC)
* Madden NFL 11 (360, PS3, WII, PS2, PSP)
* WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 (PS3, 360, PS2, WII, PSP)

** includes CE, bundles

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