Nintendo shares fell today after year-on-year sales of its popular Wii console plunged by 17 per cent in the United States.

The Japanese company only sold 601,000 units in the US in March, its first drop in sales in 14 months.

Overall, sales of hardware, software and accessories were also down 17 per cent to $1.43 billion (£950 million) when compared to the same month a year earlier, according to NPD Group, a market researcher.

The video games industry has grown accustomed to performing better than the overall market, with Nintendo particularly successful. The Japanese company’s Wii console sold nearly three million units in the UK last year after games like Wii Fit and Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training gained appeal outside the games industry's traditional following of teenage boys.

Nintendo software accounted for more than half of the games software market, the Entertainment Retailers' Association (ERA) said.

But these latest results cast doubt on the video game market’s assumed immunity to recession.

While analysts widely expected game sales to slow, the month's double-digit decline was larger than most estimates, which forecast software sales to come in flat to down slightly.

Although it was tempting to conclude that “the sky is starting to fall on the video games industry", Anita Frazier, an NPD analyst, said the shift of the Easter holiday to April hurt this year's sales. Last March also saw the launch of Nintendo's "Super Smash Bros. Brawl," which ended up becoming one of the year's best-selling games. There was no comparable game launch this past month.

Stores in the US sold 330,000 of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 consoles, a 26 per cent gain, and 218,000 of Sony’s PlayStation 3, a 15 per cent drop.

Hardware sales fell 18 per cent to $455.6 million and software sales declined 17 per cent to $792.8 million. Sales of accessories such as controllers and other add-ons slipped 15 per cent to $185.7 million in March.

“If there was one area that surprised me this month, it was hardware sales,” Ms Frazier said.. “While it’s not unusual for March hardware sales to be lower than February, I thought we’d see higher unit sales on most platforms.”

Even so, the Wii remained the month's best-selling console with 601,000 units sold, followed by the handheld Nintendo DS at 563,000. The Xbox 360 came in at 330,000 units and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3, the most expensive console, at 218,000.

Nintendo's Denise Kaigler, vice president of corporate affairs, said the recently launched DSi, the latest version of the popular handheld system, sold 435,000 units during its first week on sale. The bulk of this will come out in April's video game sales numbers.

Last month's most popular game was Capcom's horror shooter "Resident Evil 5" for the Xbox 360, followed by "Pokeman Platinum" for the Nintendo DS. Microsoft's "Halo Wars" was number three.

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