Germans move to games consoles from PCs

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German video gamers, long wedded to their personal computers, are switching to games consoles and mobile devices, pushing German games software sales up 21 percent to 1.36 billion euros ($2.1 billion) last year.

The German games software association (BIU) said on Friday sales of games for consoles such as the Nintendo (7974.OS) Wii, Sony (6758.T) PlayStation or Microsoft (MSFT.O) Xbox rose 38 percent to 904 million euros in 2007.

By contrast, sales of PC games slipped 3 percent to 458 million euros.

Games for mobile devices were the fastest-growing segment of the market, with sales rising 65 percent to 360 million euros as more casual gamers entered the market, the BIU said.

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Erica Billingham)