The NPD has released its sales data for October 2008 and it brings some familiar news that range anywhere from outstanding to discouraging, depending on your point of view. In a month where the Xbox 360 price cut was fully advertised, Microsoft managed to ship 371,000 units – slightly above September – whereas the more expensive PlayStation 3 slipped from 232,400 to 190,000 units sold.

Either way, Nintendo once again dominated the hardware scene with a whopping 803,000 Wii units sold, their biggest number since December 2007, and a further 491,000 units for the DS handheld.

On the software side, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 role-playing game Fable II topped the charts for the month with 790,000 copies sold, beating out other brand new releases such as Fallout 3 or Sony’s Little Big Planet as well as established hits like Wii Fit. Overall the entire video game market in the U.S. was up 18 percent from the same month last year, seemingly unaffected by the current economic downturn.