Sells more than the combined figures of the Wii and PlayStation 3

Dec 12, 2011 13:54 GMT  ·  By

The NPD Group has released its hardware and software charts for the month of November and the United States market, showing that the Xbox 360 home console from Microsoft has managed to take the top spot for the fourth month in a row.

The device has managed to sell 1.7 million units during the month, many of them on Black Friday, and the company says that the increase over the same period of 2010 is an impressive 24 percent.

Anita Frazier, who is an analyst working for the NPD Group, stated, “The gap between 360 sales and sales of the next best selling platform was the largest we've seen since December 2008 when the Nintendo DS was the top selling system.”

Sony also reported a good month, saying that the PlayStation 3 has seen its best ever Black Friday period and has managed hardware sales that are about 70% better than during last November, with overall sales coming in close to 900,000 units.

The Nintendo Wii was third when it comes to hoe console sales, with 860,000 consoles moved to gamers, which is a decrease of 32 percent over last year, while the Nintendo 3DS handheld has delivered its best month ever, selling 795,000 devices.

This being its total sales since launch to 2.37 million units and the 3DS is on track to beat the first year performance of the original platform in its family.

Despite the reported increases in unit sales the overall value of hardware sold in the United States for the month of November went down by 9 percent when compared to 2010, coming in at 982.4 million dollars (735.7 million Euro).

Frazier added, “The month-over-month sales increase versus October that all systems realized is in line with the range we typically see going into November, so hardware performed in line with typical seasonality trends.”

The industry was overall flat, with an increase of just 0.4 percent over an already disappointing 2010.