February was very kind to Nintendo, as U.S. consumers brought home over three quarters of a million Wiis home with them, making the motion controlled console the bestselling hardware last month.
The Wii's take of 753,000 units in February was a huge boost over its take from the same month last year. In February of 2008, the Wii moved 432,000 consoles, an astounding increase of 74%. That's also up from January 2009, when the Wii sold 679,200 units to the U.S. video game buying public.
Microsoft secured third (again) with 391,000 consumers jumping in to the Xbox 360 experience, way up from the same period last year. The PlayStation family rounds out the bottom half of the chart, with the PlayStation 3 seeing a year-to-year drop from the previous February.
- Wii - 753,000
- Nintendo DS - 588,000
- Xbox 360 - 391,000
- PlayStation 3 - 276,000
- PSP - 199,000
- PlayStation 2 - 131,000
Total hardware spend was $532.7 million, up 11% from February last year.
"The U.S. video games industry continues to post strong year-over-year comps despite the tough economy," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier. "Unit sales increased even more than dollar sales did, reflecting a slightly lower average retail price for all categories as compared to last year."
"The Xbox 360 realized its biggest non-holiday sales month, save for September 2007, when the Halo 3 release brought in a large group of new owners. Compared to last month, the PS3 realized the greatest month-over-month unit sales increase of all platforms."