Wii and Cod4 top in US, shows NPD data

Wii sold 274,000 units in America in January, according to NPD data released yesterday, making it the best selling US console for the money.

PlayStation 3 came second, outselling Xbox 360. The Sony machine sold 269,000 units, compared to 230,000 for Microsoft's console. Microsoft has blamed hardware shortages and heavy Christmas demand for the figures.

"Our retailers are telling us that Xbox 360 is selling as fast as they can restock, but due to this high demand, Xbox 360 is experiencing temporary shortages," said the company in a statement. We are working as quickly as we can to replenish inventory."

Here's the list:

1. Wii - 274K (from 1.35 million)
2. PlayStation 3 - 269K (from 798K)
3. Nintendo DS - 251K (from 2.47 million)
4. PSP - 230K (from 1.06 million)
5. Xbox 360 - 230K (from 1.26 million)

Call of Duty 4 was the most bought American game last month, selling another 330,000 units. In second place was the bundled Wii Play with 298,000 copies sold, third place going to Guitar Hero III, which sold 240,000 units. Activision's probably "quite pleased". Here's the top ten:

1. Call of Duty 4 (Xbox 360, Activision) - 330.9K
2. Wii Play w/remote (Wii, Nintendo) - 298.1K
3. Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock w/guitar (Wii, Activision) - 239.6K
4. Rock Band (Xbox 360, MTV/Harmonix) - 183.8K
5. Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock w/guitar (Xbox 360, Neversoft/Activision) - 182.7K
6. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii, Nintendo) - 172K
7. Burnout Paradise (Xbox 360, EA) - 144.1K
8. Call of Duty 4 (Xbox 360, Activision) - 140K
9. Mario Party (DS, Nintendo) - 138.5K
10. Mario and Sonic: Olympic Games (DS, Sega) - 133K

The overall market was up 11 percent, meaning that all the analysts that predicted a 5 percent drop for the month due to it containing four weeks at retail insead of five, were completely wrong. Way to earn your emormous salaries there, analyst-types.