The NPD data (console sales data in the US) for the month of January has just been released with surprising results. Without further adieu:
Total Hardware Units: 1,227,000
Nintendo Wii: 274,000
Nintendo DS: 251,000
PLAYSTATION 3: 269,000
Xbox 360: 230,000
PlayStation Portable: 230,000
As you can see, the Wii unsurprisingly took the top honor of best-selling console once again, while the PlayStation 3 managed to surpass the Xbox 360 by a decent margin of 39,000 units. Additionally, the gap between the Wii and the PS3 was a measly 5,000 units; a far cry from the hundreds of thousands gaps seen during several months last year.
The PlayStation 3 was the only console to outperform its expected sales numbers, as it was predicted to sell 209,300 units, but actually sold 28.52% more than that amount. All other hardware sales were under their respective predicted amount of units.
"Coming off a great holiday sales season we see strong momentum behind PS3 in 2008, and feel confident about the year ahead," commented Jack Tretton, CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment America. "We have an exceptionally diverse lineup of exclusive games, from Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Resistance 2 to more mainstream games such as LittleBigPlanet and SingStar. Beyond that, we have Blu-ray emerging as the de facto high def standard, the developer community is hitting their stride, consumers are recognizing the tremendous value and innovative services such as PlayStation Home are all in the works, so this is definitely shaping up to be a breakthrough year for us."