Despite initial signs of resilience amid recession, the video game business is finally at the receiving end of the blows of the downturn!

Till February, the video game industry appeared recession-proof - with the US retail sales of games, gaming consoles and accessories showing a significant 19 percent growth to $18 billion. However, according to industry researcher the NPD Group, sales of video games weakened rather disturbingly in March.

While the year-on-year sales figures for game software plunged 17 percent in the US; game hardware sales dropped by 18 percent; and accessories' sale fell 15 percent.

The sales figures of the March-released new game, Resident Evil 5 from Capcom, stood at 1.5 million units sold for the Xbox 360 and PS 3. The market leader Nintendo retained its top place in hardware sales for March, by selling 601,000 Wii consoles and 563,000 units of its handheld DS.

Commenting on the plunge in videogame sales, Chris Remo, an editor for the Gamasutra game development website, said that the drop in sales "might be partially attributable to the overall economic slowdown. It may be that consumer demand for video games is starting to reflect the overall downward trends in consumer demand.

But I think that in the long run, the video game industry is likely to suffer less in this economy than other industries."