It's been a lucrative holiday season for video games to say the least, with retailers reporting huge leaps in both consoles and software sales across the board. So which console sold the most systems during the two months leading up to Christmas in North America? According to preliminary findings by market analysts IDC, Microsoft came out on top, selling 2 million 360s during November and December, with the Nintendo Wii a close second with 1.8 million sold. The Playstation 3 brought up the rear at a mere 750 thousand.

Things to keep in mind as you take those figures in. First off, I'd say a fair share of 360s were purchased because the PS3 and the Wii were hard to find. Between that, the Xbox 360's two-week head start, and the fact that the newer consoles had limited availability you can't really take the findings as a measure of console popularity.

What the numbers do mean, however, is that 4.5 million next-gen (or is that current gen now?) consoles were sold in North America in 2 months, representing over $1.5 billion in sales. To put that into perspective, that's a lot more money than I have in my pocket right now. Michael Fahey

Xbox 360 topped US hardware sales chart over Xmas - IDC [GamesIndustry.biz]

(edit) After we ran this story, GamesIndustry.biz corrected theirs, noting that IDC was the company that provided the estimates, not NPD. Our story has been corrected accordingly.

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