Consumers may have stayed tuned to their televisions and not their game consoles during the Olympics, but the lull in sales has failed to halt growth in the market, according to latest figures from Inform.

The channel market analyst reports PC and consoles games shipments for September dropped 10 per cent on August figures, but overall market value grew 4 per cent as game prices rose across both PC and console formats.

Vendors have begun jostling in the lead-up to the Christmas rush. Sales of Sega's Dreamcast were up 79 per cent from August as the price of the console was cut to $299. Consequently, game shipments for the platform were up 53 per cent.

Sales were also up for PlayStation games, albeit only slightly at 0.3 per cent. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for the PlayStation by Activision won the number one spot across the board. However sales for Nintendo's N64 games dropped 33 per cent Gameboy shipments were down 23 per cent.

Diablo2 was finally knocked off its number one PC game spot by Baldurs Gate 2.

In the Gameboy market, Pokemon titles seem to be the key to sales success, accounting for the top four carrying the theme. Pokemon games account for half the game sales for the format.

Hardware sales were down. PlayStation shipments decreased by 23 per cent on August figures while N64 sales fell 45 per cent and Gameboy 31 per cent.