NPD Hardware: Xbox 360 Once Again Thrashes PlayStation 3 and Wii in June

The NPD Group has once again showcased its sales tracking data for the month of June and not much has changed as opposed to May, with Microsoft's Xbox 360 once again leading in terms of sales, while its competitors, the PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii, are struggling to keep up with the extremely popular console.

While the NPD numbers proclaimed May to be one of the worst months for the gaming industry, June has been much better with this market segment, with revenues totaling $1.03 billion, but still down from the $1.15 billion recorded one year ago.

Software sales also dropped, from $531.3 million to a lower $469.5 million, but, despite all these downward trends, Microsoft's Xbox 360 is still flying high in terms of sales.

According to numbers released by Microsoft, via Industry Gamers, 507,000 units have been sold in the United States, nearly twice the amount recorded by any of its rivals, like the PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii, with sales of consoles, accessories or games reaching $350 million, up from the $265 million recorded last month.

"Xbox 360 maintains its lead in the U.S. console market, selling more units in the U.S. than any other console for 12 of the past 13 months. Even while console and software sales across the industry have slowed, as often happens in the summer, Xbox 360 continues growing, staying on track to have the biggest year in Xbox history in the sixth year of its lifecycle," the company said.

Sony also released a statement to Industry Gamers, but it preferred to focus on the stellar performance of its PlayStation 3 exclusive, Infamous 2, which managed to become the best-selling version of a game this month, and highlighted, with the help of the extremely popular Uncharted 3 multiplayer beta, just how big the interest in the PlayStation 3 is right now.

Nintendo also released its official numbers, via Gama Sutra, which highlighted that sales were still quite high this month for all of its platforms, including the 3DS, DS or Wii.

"Nintendo sold more than 800,000 combined hardware units in June," the company said. "This includes 386,000 units of the Nintendo DS family of systems, 273,000 Wii systems and 143,000 Nintendo 3DS systems. Each product line saw double-digit growth over the previous month, and the lifetime U.S. installed base for the Wii system crossed 36 million units."