Feb 15, 2008, 23:48 GMT
San Francisco - Sony's Playstation 3 finally appears to be making a comeback.
The video game console outsold rival Microsoft Xbox 360 in the US for the first time in January, notching up 269,000 units sold compared to the Xbox 360's 230,000 sales according to market tracker NPD.
Nintendo's Wii was once again the top seller with 274,000 units sold. Sony's PS2 sold 264,000 units while the handheld Nintendo DS racked up sales of 251,000.
Sony said the sales figures validated its PS3 strategy after slow initial sales due to the console's high price and doubts over the future of the Blu-ray technology for high definition videos.
Sony has drastically dropped the PS3 price in recent months, at the same time the entertainment world was shifting its support to Blu-ray from Hitachi's rival HD DVD technology.
'Coming off a great holiday season we see strong momentum behind PS3 in 2008, and feel confident about the year ahead,' said Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton. 'We have Blu-ray emerging as the de-facto high-def standard, the developer community is hitting their stride, consumers are recognizing the tremendous value and innovative services such as PlayStation Home are all in the works, so this is definitely shaping up to be a breakthrough year for us.'
In a separate report, market researcher iSuppli forecast Friday that the global base of Wii game consoles will rise to 30.2 million units in 2008, up from 18 million in 2007, putting it ahead of the Xbox 360's projected 25.7 million units.
The Microsoft console has enjoyed an overall lead in sales since it was launched a year earlier than the Nintendo machine. There were only 3.2 million Wiis in people's homes at the end of 2006, the report said.
iSuppli attributed Nintendo's success to a strategy of offering a lower-cost game console targeted at everyday people, rather than an expensive console with the latest graphics aimed at video game lovers.
The main difference between the Wii and its rivals is the wireless controller and sensors that detect hand motion and speed.
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