Nintendo’s Wii has surpassed Microsoft’s Xbox 360 as the most popular video-game console in U.S. homes. We just don’t know yet when it happened exactly.

Every month, the industry-tracking NPD Group releases video-game sales data for the previous month. Last week’s June report once again showed the Wii outselling the 360 by a significant margin in May, nearly half a million units (675,100 to 186,600). That gap has been holding steady for the past several months. (In fact, even the once-sputtering PlayStation 3 is now consistently outselling the 360.)

So I asked NPD what the installed user base — the total number of systems in U.S. homes — was for the Wii and 360 as of May. These data are not part of the monthly report. The response from NPD spokesman David Riley: 10.2 million units for the Wii and 10.3 million units for the 360. (The PS3 is a distant 4.5 million.) With the Wii’s recent performance, it doesn’t take much to extrapolate that the Wii has already made up that 100,000-unit gap in the first few weeks of this month and is now the top console, not just in monthly sales but also in total sales to date.

The Wii has done this even though it came out a year after the 360 — and it’s still hard to find in stores. It has succeeded based on its agreeable $249 price and buzz over its unique motion-controlled games. Casual gamers of all ages have flocked to the Wii. 

We’ll know for sure when NPD releases the June figures in mid-July that the Wii is No. 1. But consider this an early heads up.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 8:20 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.