Xbox 360 bumps Wii out of top September spot

Port Washington (NY) - For the first time all year, Nintendo’s Wii console was not the top-selling system last month, thanks to a little game called Halo 3.

According to the latest data from NPD Group, Xbox 360 sales totaled 527,800 units in the US last month, the highest monthly total so far this year. That’s nearly double the system’s unit sales for August, which totaled 276,700. In typical fashion, the Playstation 3 trailed far behind both consoles, with 119,000 units sold in September.

The Wii’s sales were also the highest they’ve been all year, but it was unable to catch up with the Xbox 360 leap. Around 501,000 Wii consoles were sold last month in the US. This marks the first month in 2007 that the Wii was not the unit sales leader.

The reason is unarguably because of the launch of Halo 3. Despite only being available for the last five days of September, it smashed sales of every other game. It was far and away the leader last month, selling 3.3 million copies in less than a week. The next-best-selling game was Wii Play, with 282,000 copies sold.

Zelda : Phantom Hourglass for the DS was third (224,000), followed by the PS2 version of Madden NFL 08 (205,000) and the Xbox 360’s Skate (175,000).