The video game industry seems to have grown in October, despite the forbidding economy, according to NPD results. For the three big hardware manufacturers, the growth has been significant. Even if Sony sold only 190,000 PlayStation 3, coming in fourth among all current platforms, the company says PS3 software sales have doubled year over year, gaining impressive momentum.

Furthermore, Sony highlighted 166 percent growth in the PlayStation Network’s user registration, stating that the total number of PSN registrations is up to 14 million. All in all, the company says it gained $131 million in hardware revenue in October, up 19 percent.

As for Microsoft’s Xbox 360, the 371,000 units sold didn’t even come close to the dominating Wii, but the software sales were higher than last month. For example, Fable III, despite being exclusive to Microsoft’s platform, topped software sales by a wide margin, well above multiplatform software whose marketing campaigns were as visible. The game sold 1.5 million units globally since its launch.

The other major hardware company, Nintendo, sold 803,000 Wii units, being by far the best-selling hardware of the month. Furthermore, the company sold 491,000 DS units, taking the top two hardware spots for October.

NPD breaks up the video-game industry into four categories: games, hardware, software and accessories. The latter was the only category to record a decline, falling 8% from October 2007.

However, the sales for accessories should grow in the holiday season. The industry in September saw its first-category sales decline since March 2006. Sales of video games fell 7%, and that’s because no blockbuster game appeared, like Halo 3 last year. NPD does not include online sales in its research, tracking sales in retail stores only.