QuoteTheyre figures for the US market and theyre just preliminary findings, but its looking like Nintendos Wii and Sonys PlayStation 3 were both outsold by Microsofts year-old Xbox 360 this Christmas - but only just.

The numbers come from US retail market watcher NPD by way of a CNBC video report. According to the research firm, around 2m Xbox 360s were sold between the start of November 2006 and Christmas Day. Nintendos Wii total was 1.8m units, a very good figure given the machine didnt launch in the US until 19 November, giving the Xbox 360 a head-start of almost three weeks.

Sony sold around 750,000 PS3s during the same period - less than half the amount of Wiis picked up during the key consumer sales period.

In November 2006, some 511,000 Xbox 360s, 476,000 Wiis and 197,000 PS3s were sold, according to NPD numbers published last year. None of the manufacturers managed to sell three times as many consoles in December as they did during the previous month, but Microsoft came the closest, followed by Sony and Nintendo.

Source: The Register.