PlayStation 3 continues to outsell Xbox 360 in U.S

Mike Bantick
Saturday, 14 June 2008 22:35

Your IT - Entertainment

The Nintendo Wii is still king-o-the-hill, but after narrowly losing out to the Xbox 360 during April, the Sony PlayStation 3 has powered past its Microsoft rival to post a big sales win during May.

The official NPD figures are in for U.S based sales of video game hardware and software.  It is a huge market and Sony have had the PS3 more than just whiffing the heals of the Microsoft Xbox 360 all 2008

May has seen the PS3 significantly outsell the Xbox 360.

Here are the numbers:

NPD May Hardware Sales Figures
Wii - 675.1K (from 714K)
Nintendo DS - 452.6K (from 415K)
PlayStation 3 - 208.7K (from 187K)
Xbox 360 - 186.6K (from 188K)
PSP - 182.3K (from 193K)
PS2 - 132.7k (from 124k)
Both Nintendo's consoles continue to lead the pack, though the drop off in Wii sales is interesting given the high place of Wii Fit and Mario Kart in the software sales, see below.

Microsoft maintained that during the early months of the year, when the PS3 first overtook the Xbox 360, that supply issues had contributed to the sales constriction.  These problems have supposedly been rectified since.  And April indeed saw the Xbox 360 once again claw itself back ahead.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft spin these figures.  One expects they will point to the software sales and continued high attach rate (the number of software titles per machine) the the Xbox 360 enjoys.