The Canadian videogame sector generated another year of record sales in 2006. Divied into three segments of hardware, software, and accessories, each experienced growth. Three new videogame consoles on the market surely helped.

According to The NPD Group, hardware sales, as represented by consoles and handheld systems, reached $349 million in 2006, which is an annual increase of 43 per cent. Software sales, meanwhile, was up 10 per cent with over $480 million in sales. Videogame accessories (like extra controllers, battery packs, etc.) generated $104 million, a 24 per cent year-over-year jump.

That Canadians purchased a record number of video game consoles and handheld systems in 2006 is not particularly surprising; '06 also happened to be the year that three new videogame consoles sparked a turf war worth talking about and spending money on; Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii, each offer something old, something new, something pilfered, something Blu (get it? ha ha).

Ironically, the market leader of 2006 was none of those new fangled Uber systems. Sony's "last-gen" PlayStation 2 topped the sales charts in 2006, followed by Microsoft's "next-gen" Xbox 360, and boy, aren't they red in the face. Nintendo swan-song singing GameCube cinched third place while Nintendo's new Wii scored fourth and Sony's PlayStation 3 brought up the rear in fifth. Microsoft's first-gen Xbox didn't even rank.

Of course, the Wii and the PS3 were only launched in the latter few weeks of 2006 -- even then might have ranked better had there been supply to meet demand, which there wasn't.

Portable/handheld system unit sales saw an increase of 22 per cent with slightly fewer than 787,000 purchased in 2006. Nintendo's DS system lead the market followed by the Nintendo Game Boy Advance system and Sony's PlayStation Portable system.

Concerning software, not only did sales increase in 2006 there was also a record number of titles introduced onto the market. According to the NPD Group, 924 titles were launched, which represents a 9 per cent annual increase.