"The multimonth doldrums that have been facing the industry due to the console transition and the lack of truly blockbuster titles appears to be over, at least for now," NPD analyst Anita Frazier said.

"We're on the road to recovery," said Frazier, who added that overall U.S. video game sales are down 3 percent versus 2005.

Hardware sales rose to $223 million from $192 million as Microsoft turned out more Xbox 360s, which cost $300 or $400 in stores, and had been so hard to find after the November debut that some people were offering theirs on eBay's online auction site for about double the retail price.

Game sales were also up almost 16 percent to $395 million in April, driven largely by strong sales of Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts II for the PlayStation 2 and UbiSoft's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare for the Xbox 360.

Executives for major video game publishers such as Electronic Arts, Activision and THQ expect U.S. video game sales to be flat to down 5 percent in 2006.