In the lead up to Black Friday, videogame sales continue ramp up in the Americas. Hardware sales increased to over 1m units this week, up 15% from last week. The total hardware sold is less than a year ago at this time, when Black Friday arrived earlier than in 2008. However, outside of that timing difference, the recession does not appear to be harming the industry. The real reason for the seasonal increases is of course the volume of top software released. Left 4 Dead, Animal Crossing, Need For Speed, as well as new entries in the Mortal Kombat and Tomb Raider series pushed all hardware sales up except for Wii, which is being withheld a bit for an enormous stock deployment on Black Friday.