According to the most recent statistics released by market research firm The NPD Group, game sales for the month of November were topped by first-person shooter `Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3', which outperformed its rival title `Battlefield 3.'

NPD Group data has also revealed that November witnessed a 15 percent year-on-year rise in the sales of video games, from $1.45 billion to $1.67 billion; with the debut-month sales of `Modern Warfare 3' exceeding similar period sales of last year's `Black Ops' by nearly 7 percent.

Noting that there was a substantial growth in content sales because of a horde of new content having been released, NPD Group's Anita Frazier said that the overall gaming industry sales had plunged during November, falling 0.5 percent below the sales in November 2010.

Frazier revealed that flat dollar sales were recorded in November this year largely because of a drop in average retail price in all categories barring portable hardware, despite the fact that unit sales for console hardware, as well as console, portable, and PC software had seen a growth during the month.

Meanwhile, pointing out that the November 2011 sales marked the first time since 2008 that software sales have witnessed a leap for three successive months, Wedbush Securities' analyst Michael Pachter said: "This kills two misperceptions about the industry. The first is that console games are dead. The second is that mobile and social games killed console games."