Economic woes continue to take their toll on video games as market researcher The NPD Group finds the industry witnessed another sales decline in the US last month, taking a 19% hit with revenues dropping to US$1.07 billion from last October’s US$1.32 billion take.

Industry analyst Anita Frazier notes the industry is on its way to generating full-year revenues between US$20 and US$21 billion, which would be just below 2008’s sales of US$21.3 billion. She cites the troubling economy and unemployment rate as having a negative impact on industry sales. Referring to NPD’s latest Economy Tracker, she says while consumers’ general opinion about the economy is improving, their outlook on their own personal situations isn’t getting better. She concludes that if the personal outlook of consumers continues to erode, it will make for much more conservative holiday shoppers.

On the hardware side, Nintendo platforms continued to dominate, with the Wii pulling in unit sales of 506,900 and the DS handheld moving 457,600 units in October. Frazier adds that the Xbox 360 platform contributed the greatest portion (27%) of total industry sales, while the PS3 came in second at 26%.

Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort both cracked the top five SKUs of the month, coming in second and fourth, respectively.