It's a little bit of a mixed bag in the gaming market for March, according to a new report from the NPD Group, and while there's a little disheartening news here, there's also quite a bit of reason to be cheery.

The overall hardware market saw a bit of a drop in March, with video game hardware sales down by nine percent. However, the sales for the current-generation hardware items is well beyond last-generation sales, and that's a good sign that the current generation of console gaming is carrying on apace.

Indeed, reports suggest that, in the 17th month of sales for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, the combined totals are better than 50 percent higher than the combined totals for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. Sony, meanwhile, held the lead in hardware sales, thanks to titles like "Bloodborne" and "Battlefield Hardline," pretty much showing that Microsoft's console was going to be second-place this console generation. Wins during the holiday shopping season were almost certainly buoyed by deep discounting, and this may have an impact on future release schedules.

That's quite an achievement, but factoring in Nintendo's numbers really ratchets things up.

Nintendo, in fact, brought in a 60 percent increase in sales on a year-over-year comparison. This actually includes the Nintendo 3DS, as well as the New Nintendo 3DS as well as the Nintendo 2DS. Considering that 3DS software sales are likewise up better than 20 percent from the same time last year--driven by titles like "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D" and "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS"-- it was clear that Nintendo isn't completely out of the action yet.

It actually seems like the console gaming market--regardless of what side is selected--is doing pretty well. We'll need to see some more games (I doubt I'm the only person looking cheerfully forward to this year's E3 action) but with what all is set for release by the end of this year and what all is likely to come out of E3, we should be in for quite the time to come. Everyone's making gains, there are titles in the works, and some of these are absolutely spectacular. I know that the first time I put in "Dying Light," I couldn't help but drool over the thought of what this kind of depth applied to "Fallout" or "Elder Scrolls" could mean. It was going to be amazing.

Only time will tell, though, how well these sales numbers translate into playable titles. But knowing what we know so far suggests that it won't be long before we're seeing some really exciting sights.