At long last sales data for the U.S. market have been released by research group NPD for the month of July. The Wii came top with 420,000 units sold, beating the 405k sold by the DS. Unfortunately for Sony, the PS3 failed to outsell the Xbox 360 but it was quite close, just 11k units separate the 170k sold by the Xbox 360 and 159k by the PS3. However, Sony's other platforms put in accomplished performances, with the PS2 selling 220,000 and the PSP 214,000. The top selling title was NCAA Football 08 for the Xbox 360, selling just shy of 400k units. Want to find out how the Nintendo crew have been celebrating their triumphant victory? Just click the following image...

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Hardware sales in particular saw much growth, rising 77.4 percent to $380.8 million. Of that total, console hardware dominated with $286 million in sales (a 140 percent jump), while portable hardware actually dipped one percent.

That said, the DS still fared quite well with 405K units sold. But it was the Wii, not the DS, that took top honors with 425K units. The news is encouraging for Sony as well, as the PS3 finally got over the 100K hump with 159K units sold, hot on the heels of the 360 which sold just 170K. Meanwhile, Sony's other platforms continued to put up respectable numbers – the PS2 sold another 222K and the PSP sold 214K. At the bottom of the list, the old GBA sold 87K units.

On the software side, total sales were up 11 percent to $419.2 million. Console software, as with hardware, made up the bulk of that with $313.2 million (a 15.9 percent bump). Portable software fell 1.5 percent. Year-to-date, software sales are at $3.3 billion, up 22.4 percent over 2006.

The big winner for July was clearly EA Sports' NCAA Football 08, whose total on the 360, PS2 and PS3 combined for 789K unit sales. As expected, Activision's Guitar Hero games and Nintendo's Wii Play, Mario Party 8 and Pokemon Diamond were all well represented too.