Metue.com

The NPD Group released its monthly hardware sales data for April late last week. Strong sales for Nintendo’s Wii and DS consoles again helped Nintendo dominate the month, outselling all competitors.

The Nintendo DS was the best-selling system in April with approximately 471,000 units sold.. The Wii, which is still in limited supply and difficult to get, was best-selling console (as opposed to portable) for the month with more than 360,000 units, nearly double the nearest competitor. The Sony PlayStation 2 finished second. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 both fell short of estimated sales for the month. Nintendo also won the award for top selling software publisher of the month with the top 2 best-selling games for the portables and console.

The numbers for April:

Hardware

• Nintendo DS: 471,000
• Wii: 360,000
• PlayStation 2: 194,000
• PlayStation Portable: 183,000
• Xbox 360: 174,000
• GameBoy Advance: 84,000
• PlayStation 3: 82,000
• GameCube: 13,000

Games

• Pokemon Diamond—NDS—Nintendo—1.045 M
• Pokemon Pearl—NDS—Nintendo—712K
• Super Paper Mario—Wii—Nintendo—352K
• Wii Play w/remote—Wii—Nintendo—249K
• Guitar Hero 2 w/guitar—360—Activision—197K
• Guitar Hero 2 w/guitar—PS2—Activision—142K
• Spider-Man 3—360—Activision—117K
• Spider-Man 3—PS2—Activision—105K
• God of War II—PS2—Sony—101K
• MLB ‘07: The Show—PS2—Sony—79K

To date, the installed hardware base over the life of the products is as follows:

• PS2 – 38.2 million
• GBA – 35.7 million
• GameCube – 11.7 million
• Nintendo DS – 10.9 million
• PSP – 7.4 million
• Xbox 360 – 5.4 million
• Wii – 2.5 million
• PS3 – 1.3 million