All play and no work makes... jack shit. Just look at our flawless inactivity as of late, if you have any doubts about it (as always, we blame it WoW). It's no wonder then that the worldwide economy is going to Hell, while PC hardware and video game sales are soaring high, even more so since summer began. In the month of June, game sales rose by 53% according to NPD Group's market research data, and just about the same can be said about hardware sales, as well - in the U.S., anyway.

Piecing together the blurry data we vaguely remember from previous months, we came up with this highly professional looking graphic, to better illustrate the situation at hand.


Yet again, the main culprit responsible for the work-sabotaging gaming sales was Nintendo, whose DS and Wii consoles topped the charts in the month of June, with 783,000 and 666,700 units sold, respectively, followed by Sony's PlayStation 3 with 405,500 units, and Microsoft's Xbox 360 lagging somewhere behind. As for the best selling game in June, well, there's not much of a quarrel there: Metal Gear Solid 4 sold 774,600 copies, not including those bundled with the PS3.

All in all, "[U.S.] sales of video game hardware, software and accessories hit $1.69 billion during the month, up from $1.1 billion in the same period a year earlier, according to data from market researcher NPD Group", via BusinessWeek.

Now back to work... Where was I?... Ah, yes, Un'Goro Crater, here I cometh!