As people cut back on spending, it seems more of us are staying home and playing video games. According to a report by market research firms NDP Group, Enterbrain, and GfK Chart-Track, video game sales are up 11% in the US, the UK and in Japan. More specifically, video game sales were up 15% in the US, with sales up 26% in the UK. Video game sales were down in Japan by 26% year over year. The drop in Japanese sales can largely be attributed to less games being developed. Japan is a massive market, and a result promoted Nintendo to slash expected earnings by 33% in 2008. Aggregately, video game sales in the US, UK, and Japan totaled 409.9 million units, up from 368 million units in 2007. Console game sales in the US were up 22% from 2007, and general video game software sales were up 36% to 268.4 million units in the US alone. The top video game worldwide in terms of sales was Nintendo’s Mario Kart Wii with 8.94 million sales. The popular video game franchise GTA IV totaled 7.29 million sales.