Consumer confidence is down, but you wouldn’t know that from video game sales the past month. Americans spent over $1.3 billion on video games, hardware and accessories in October — an 18 percent increase from the previous month, market analysts say.

About $495 million of that spending was on hardware alone — the Nintendo Wii a particular favorite. The company said it sold about 803,000 units in October alone, more than any October previous. (Nintendo began boosting production of the console this summer.)

Rival hardware maker Microsoft said its Xbox 360 sales improved in October mainly due to a price cut in September and interest in the new “Fallout 3″ title. Xbox 360 outsold Sony’s PlayStation 3 system 371,000 units to 190,000 units.

As for top-selling games, “Fable II” topped the list, with almost 800,000 copies heading out the door in October, followed by Nintendo’s “Wii Fit,” with 487,000 copies.

Given such robust sales during the threat of an economic meltdown, it’s likely that game and hardware sales will remain strong going into the holiday shopping season, the analysts say.