It would appear that Microsoft's strategy to issue a price drop in time for the release of Madden NFL 08 has unsurprisingly worked to their advantage. One can only assume that the boys in Redmond are observing August's Excel spreadsheet from the NPD Group from their thrones amid bouts of maniacal, power hungry laughter. With no hope of beating the Wii's untouchable 400,000-plus units sold last month, the Xbox 360's trouncing of all things PlayStation was no fluke. It's smart marketing.

Hardware sales in the U.S. for the month of August are below, with lifetime-to-date sales after the jump.

• Wii - 403,600
• Nintendo DS - 383,300
• Xbox 360 - 276,700
• PlayStation 2 - 202,000
• PSP - 151,200
• PLAYSTATION 3 - 130,600

Total video game hardware sales for August were at $384 million, up 94.1% over the previous year.

The following list shows current U.S. console and portable gaming device sales from launch date to September 1, 2007.

• PlayStation 2 - 39,100,000
• Nintendo DS - 12,700,000
• PSP - 8,300,000
• Xbox 360 - 6,300,000
• Wii - 4,000,000
• PLAYSTATION 3 - 1,750,000

Again, thanks to the NPD Group for providing us with the info.

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