Like last month and the month before and the month before, Nintendo has dominated U.S. hardware sales with the Wii and Nintendo DS. The two combined sold over 1.2 million units to consumers in the month of September, far more than Sony and Microsoft's platforms combined. Just like last month. And the month before that.

Things were good all over, with September outselling August by a considerable margin. Helping that was Microsoft's performance, with a 42% boost month to month. That jump, from 195K to 347K, can be chalked up to the Xbox 360's across the board price drop and the release of Rock Band 2.

Despite all that good news, hardware sales were down, year over year. Why? Halo 3 was released in September of '07, spiking hardware sales.

• Wii - 687,000
• Nintendo DS - 536,800
• Xbox 360 - 347,200
• PSP - 238,100
• PlayStation 3 - 232,400
• PlayStation 2 - 173,500

"Hardware unit sales were flat versus last year so the decline in dollars is due to lower prices. The average retail price of hardware across all platforms declined 8% from last September," NPD analyst Anita Frazier said.

Despite the price drops, $497.98 million worth of hardware was snatched up by the gaming masses. That makes the total cash grab for the year $4.22 billion, up 16% from the same period last year.

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