“The continued economic turmoil, and in particular the troubling unemployment rate, is undoubtedly impacting industry sales,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier. “Our latest Economy Tracker indicated that although consumers’ general opinion about the economy is improving, their outlook on their own personal situation is worsening. If consumers’ personal outlook continues to erode, they could very well be much more conservative with their holiday shopping this year.”

A somber warning for the videogame industry. Even recent price cuts on game consoles have done little to spur demand.

“Year to date, the hardware category has experienced the sharpest decline in the industry, with unit sales down 10 percent compared to the same time period last year,” Frazier wrote. “Recent price cuts helped spur a one- to two-month increase in unit sales, and this month’s Wii sales reflect that boost, but the other platforms have not sustained the sales momentum after price reduction.”

The videogame industry may be recession-resistant, but it is clearly not recession-proof, as some once believed. Sales data, below.

U.S. Hardware Sales, October 2009

1. Wii 506.9K
2. Nintendo DS 457.6K
3. PlayStation 3 320.6K
4. Xbox 360 249.7K
5. PSP 174.6K
6. PlayStation 2 117.8K

U.S. Top Ten Software Sales, October 2009

1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3, Sony) 537,000
2. Wii Fit Plus (Wii, Nintendo) 441,000
3. Borderlands (360, Take 2) 418,000
4. Wii Sports Resort (Wii, Nintendo) 314,000
5. NBA 2K10 (360, Take 2) 311,000
6. Halo 3: ODST (360, Microsoft) 271,000
7. NBA 2K10 (PS3, Take 2) 213,000
8. Forza Motorsport 3 (360, Microsoft) 175,000
9. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (DS, Square Enix) 169,000
10. FIFA Soccer 10 (360, Electronic Arts) 156,000

380,000 Kindles sold. That’s double Mahaney’s May prediction. And it’s an important number historically. “In its first year, that’s exactly how many iPods were sold,” Mahaney wrote. “Turns out the Kindle is becoming the iPod of the book world.”

But is it really? And on what sort of data is that pronouncement based? Amazon (AMZN) itself has disclosed no actual sales data for the Kindle. The company said only that the selection of titles available for the device has jumped 67 percent since its launch. Surely it’s impossible to extrapolate sales of 380,000 from that figure alone. So on what other data is Mahaney relying here? Just this, apparently:

1. An anonymous source recently told TechCrunch that Amazon has shipped 240,000 Kindles. That’s shipped, not sold.
2. Kindle tops Amazon’s Bestsellers in Electronics list
3. Kindle has more than 4,000 customer reviews, quite a few of them positive.

Not exactly an abundance of hard data, is it? Which is not to say that the Kindle isn’t well on its way to becoming the iPod of the book world, just that we won’t know for certain until Amazon tells us with hard sales figures.