When Microsoft emailed me Thursday morning to tout that the Xbox 360 had passed 10 million in total U.S. sales, I knew something was up. Sure enough, later in the afternoon, Nintendo announced that the Wii had just passed 9.5 million. Then, last night,  the NPD Group released its video-game sales data for April, which showed that the Wii sold an astounding 714,200 units during the month compared with the Xbox 360’s paltry 188,000.

You know what that means? Last year’s seemingly outlandish predictions about the Wii being the No. 1 system in U.S. households by the end of this year are apparently wrong. It looks as if it will happen by the end of the summer at that sales pace.

You might think that the release of Grand Theft Auto IV for the 360 would turn the tide. (The first five days of its release are included in the April data, where it was the top seller.) But Nintendo has its own blockbuster titles, too.

“As retail supplies become more plentiful, we’re seeing continued sales strength of Wii hardware,” NPD analyst Anita Frazier said. “With a couple of blockbuster games [such as April’s No. 2 title, Mario Kart Wii, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl] already in the market this year, and with Wii Fit and Rock Band still to come in the next two months, the pipeline of content to continue to drive hardware acquisition looks very good.”

Coming Monday: the highly anticipated release of Wii Fit. Look for my review of it on Tuesday.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 7:46 am and is filed under Video games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.