With nearly $1 billion in sales recorded for the month of July, the year-to-date progress of the North American gaming industry is up some 43% over July 2006 numbers, with NPD's Anita Frazier now putting the yearly estimate of total industry sales at $16-18 billion.

Nintendo has emerged as the clear leader in hardware sales this year, with 425,000 and 405,000 sales of its Wii and DS consoles recorded in July, respectively. Sony's PlayStation 2 pushed 222,000 units, while the PSP recorded 214,000 sales. Microsoft edged out Sony with 170,000 Xbox 360 units sold to the PS3's 159,000. Nintendo's die-hard Gameboy Advance followed up the pack with 87,000 units.

Shack community member Chazums charted the numbers in a series of graphs, showing the yearly current-gen hardware sales broken down by month, as well as the overall install base of each system.

Software sales last month were dominated by football and rock, with three instances each of Electronic Arts' NCAA Football 08 and Activision's Guitar Hero games hitting the top 10.

1. NCAA Football 08 (360; Electronic Arts) 397,000
2. Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s (PS2; Activision) 339,000
3. Wii Play (Wii; Nintendo) 278,000
4. NCAA Football 08 (PS2; Electronic Arts) 236,000
5. Mario Party 8 (Wii; Nintendo) 177,000
6. NCAA Football 08 (PS3; Electronic Arts) 156,000
7. Pokemon Diamond (DS; Nintendo) 144,000
8. Transformers: The Game (PS2; Activision) 143,000
9. Guitar Hero 2 w/guitar (PS2; Activision) 138,000
10. Guitar Hero 2 w/guitar (360; Activision) 108,000