Sony's PS3 Gathers Speed, But Wii Still Shines

After months of sluggishness on the store shelves, Sony(SNE - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) underwent a relative resurgence in February, with robust U.S. sales of its latest PlayStation 3 console.

But Nintendo continued to rule the charts, boosting sales of its Wii device by nearly 60% from January, and selling 3 Wiis for every 2 PS3s that moved during the month.

Sales of PS3 consoles beat rival Microsoft's(MSFT - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) Xbox 360 for the second month, even as Sony's older PlayStation 2 system made a big comeback -- outselling both the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Sony sold 280,800 PS3s in February (up from 269,000 units the month before) while the PS2 sold 351,800 units last month. That compares to 254,600 Xbox 360s sold last month, a slight increase from 230,000 sold in January.

Nintendo sold 432,000 Wiis compared with 274,000 in January, according to monthly video games sales data from NPD.

A Microsoft spokesperson blamed inventory shortages for the company's poor performance. Last month, Microsoft had said it did not enough Xbox 360 consoles available to customers who wanted it. The company said it hopes to have enough Xbox 360s out for customers by April.

"Whether there is an Xbox 360 shortage or not, it is clear that the PS3 has gained considerable ground on its rival," said Jesse Divnich, an analyst with The simExchange, an online video-games fantasy stock market.

On the games side, publisher Activision's(ATVI - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) monster hit, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare continued to top the charts, for the fourth month in a row, followed by Capcom's Devil May Cry 4 game.

Industry sales, including hardware, software and accessories grew 34% last month compared to a year ago and reached $1.33 billion, said NPD.

Hardware sales rose 19% to $480 million, while sales of video games software was up 47% to $668.7 million in February.

"Even following a red-hot 2007, the video games industry shows no sign of letting up as year-to-date sales through February are up 12% over last year," said Anita Frazier, an analyst with NPD, in a statement.

The best-selling title of the month, Activision's Call of Duty 4 for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console sold about 296,000 copies, down from 331,000 copies in January.

Capcom's Devil May Cry 4 game for the Xbox 360 took the second spot (295,200 copies), followed by Nintendo's Wii Playgame (289,700 copies).

Other games in the top-10 list included Activision's Guitar Hero III for the Wii at No.5 and Lost Odyssey from Microsoft at No. 7.

Activision's biggest rival Electronic Arts(ERTS - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) came in 10th on the charts with Rock Band, a game published by Viacom's(VIA - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) MTV Networks and distributed by EA.