The Wii topped NPD Group sales data once again for the month of October, selling over 800,000 units to consumers in the United States. That's well over twice what its closest console competitor, the Xbox 360, did during the same period. It's also a sizable jump over September's take, when the Wii sold 687,000 units. Nintendo DS sales were down from October, but total Nintendo hardware sales were up to almost 1.3 million units. According to NPD analyst Anita Frazier, the jump in Wii sales can be attributed to a greater supply of hardware at retail. That made October the Wii's best month since December of 2007. Frazier notes that the September period consisted of five weeks of sales, with October a shorter four week month. Here's how the hardware contest ultimately went down.• Wii - 803,000 • Nintendo DS - 491,000 • Xbox 360 - 371,000 • PSP - 193,000 • PlayStation 3 - 190,000 • PlayStation 2 - 136,000 It was a down month for the PlayStation family, with all Sony hardware taking a hit before the holiday season kicks off. Total hardware spend for October was $494.74 million, up from October of 2007 by about 5%. Total take for the year? $4.72 billion United States bucks. That's 14% better than lame old 2007, thank you very much. "The price reduction on the Xbox 360 is paying dividends at retail as the platform realized a 7% unit sales increase over September," Frazier said of Microsoft's across the board price drop. As for the competition, "The PS3 realized the greatest year-over-year monthly unit sales increase at 57%."
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