Going by the recent statistics brought forth in a report by three market research groups - GfK Chart-Track, NPD Group, and Enterbrain, the recession-hit video games industry witnessed an 8 percent fall in unit sales video games, to 379.3 million, last year in three key global markets – the US, UK, and Japan.

Specifically elaborating the 2009 data for the three countries, the report noted that the unit sales plunged 7 percent in the US; 14 percent in UK; and 2 percent in Japan.

While the console game unit sales and portable game sales dropped 7 percent and 6 percent respectively in the US; these numbers plunged 8 percent and 25 percent in UK; and 5 percent and a 1 percent in Japan.

In the opinion of NPD Group’s industry analyst Anita Frazier, despite the fact that video game sales witnessed a notable plunge in 2009, largely due to the economic downturn, the video game industry “is still boasting significant volumes that were unseen before 2008.”

Meanwhile, in all the three countries, ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’ happened to be the best selling game, with an overall sale of 11.86 million games in these countries; followed by ‘Wii Sports Resort’ which sold 7.57 million games; and ‘New Super Mario Bros. Wii’ which sold 7.41 million games.