Game On! Wii Sees Record Sales; Xbox, PS3, Not So Much

Nintendo also sold 1.57 million DS handhelds for the month, according to research group NPD. Microsoft sold roughly 836,000 units of XBox 360. Sony sold 378,000 PS3s, 421,000 PSPs and 206,000 PS2s, NPD reported.

The research group also said that hardware sales climbed to $1.21 billion last month, a 10 percent gain compared to sales in November 2007.

Just last week, Microsoft trumpeted Black Friday sales of its Xbox 360, saying that the consoles outsold the PlayStation by 3-to-1. The Redmond, Wash.-based company also said it estimated a 25 percent increase over Xbox 360 Black Friday sales figures from 2007.

However, Macquarie Securities analyst David Gibson told Forbes that in his estimation, each Wii provides $6 of operating profit for Nintendo. While that may seem like a paltry amount, consider that Microsoft just breaks even on each Xbox 360 unit sold, and Sony actually loses money on every PlayStation 3 sold, he said.

Meanwhile, the top 10 software sales in November was led by Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360), at 1.56 million copies; Call of Duty: World at War (Xbox 360), 1.41 million; Wii Play, 796,000; Wii Fit, 697,000; Mario Kart Wii, 637,000; Call of Duty: World at War (PS3), 597,000; and Guitar Hero: World Tour (Wii), 475,000.

Total software sales in November topped $1.45 billion, up 11 percent from $1.31 billion in sales for the same period a year ago, according to NPD.

NPD analyst Anita Frazier said that the researcher's "Consumer Spending Indicator shows that video games [are] the category consumers are least likely to cut back on this holiday."

With that in mind and seeing that December typically garners the strongest sales, NPD forecasted that the total number of U.S. video game industry sales will be more than $22 billion for 2008.