The NPD Group has issued its March video game sales report, revealing a rather large 28 percent drop in software sales (including PC) to $432 million. Hardware on the other hand has soared 78 percent on the strength of the new consoles, totalling $395 million. Overall, total industry sales increased 3 percent to $1.03 billion.

“Software declines in March 2014 stemmed from poor comparisons to new launches from last March. Collectively, March 2014 launches sold 42 percent less than March 2013 launches," explained NPD analyst Liam Callahan.

"Last March we saw eight of the top ten games were new launches with games like Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Gears of War: Judgment, God of War: Ascension. This March saw six of the top ten games as new launches with Titanfall, inFAMOUS Second Son, South Park: The Stick Of Truth, and Dark Souls II.”

It seems Titanfall, while grabbing the number one spot, wasn't enough to hold PlayStation 4 sales back, with the NPD confirming that Sony's next-gen console has officially topped Xbox One. Yesterday we saw Sony announce that the PlayStation 4 has surpassed 7 million sales globally, while Microsoft has revealed 5 million for their Xbox One.

We’re also happy to share today that more than 5 million Xbox One consoles have been sold-in to retailers since our launch. The new generation is off to a strong start, with global Xbox One sales outpacing Xbox 360 by more than 60 percent at the same point in time, a true testament to your love of console gaming. Even more important to us is how much fun you are having on Xbox One. It’s amazing that Xbox One fans are spending an average of five hours per day on Xbox One and collectively have totaled more than one billion hours of time spent in games and apps on the console. We’re also thrilled to see your use and enjoyment of the latest features and apps we have released as part of our regular system updates. In particular, we broke new usage records with the number of unique Twitch broadcasters in the first week of availability.

Hardware in general put in a robust performance during the last month, boosting the industry year-over-year. "PS4 and Xbox One continue to see success with cumulative sales of the two consoles through the first five months currently totaling more than double that of their predecessors, the PS3 and Xbox 360," added Callahan.