Electronic Arts (ERTS) was more than 2% higher Thursday morning, thanks mainly to news that the latest installation of its Medal of Honor franchise has set a presale record.

The newest game is based in Afghanistan and introduces players to a new class of warrior. Past iterations of the franchise have helped the company, and while specific sales data was not released, it seems that investors are assuming that sales of the game will be massive.

Early Monday morning, video-game manufacturer THQ (THQI) announced that a stronger U.S. dollar and lower-than-expected sales of UFC Undisputed have caused the company to lower its first-quarter and full-year revenue forecast.

The company now believes it will report full-year net sales in a range of $845 million to $865 million, along with managing to break even on per-share earnings. THQ had earlier forcast net sales to total between $905 million and $920 million with earnings between 25 cents per share and 30 cents per share. As for analysts, expectations were for 31 cents per share with revenue of $913.4 million.

January proved to be a rather difficult month for the video-game world, as evidenced by a greater-than-expected drop in sales during the month. According to the NPD Group, U.S. game sales fell 12% during January. The drop in game sales was expected to total 5%. In addition to this news, hardware sales dropped by 21% during the month.

Reportedly, Nintendo (NTDOY) sold 465,800 units during the month. This total was down more than 30% during January 2009. The Nintendo DS saw sales fall 17% from a year ago to 422,200 units. Nintendo pulled down the hardware segment, as both Sony (SNE) and Microsoft (MSFT) saw sales of their gaming consoles increase.

So much for the notion that video game sales would turn around in August. Slumping sales pushed the slide for video game sales to six straight months. During August, 15% fewer games were sold than a year earlier, and the drop was more than industry analysts expected.

Just because the overall sales dropped, it doesn't mean that some companies didn't turn in a good month. Sony (NYSE: SNE) saw sales increase, thanks to the company's decision to slash the price of its wildly popular PlayStation 3.