I'm so happy the Xbox 360 was the best selling console of the holiday season. Oh, wait, it was the Nintendo Wii. Oh, wait again, it was the PS3. I'm so confused! Apparently you would be too if you received all the press releases the companies released after the NPD released their numbers. So who was the real winner? Why don't we just say "gamers" were the real winners, because it is hard to make heads or tails out of all the spin the big three are spinning.

From the article:

Last night, after the NPD reported hardware and software sales for the month of December (and this morning saw the revision to some software figures) each of the platform holders issued press releases declaring itself champion of the holiday season. Who really won the hardware battle? It depends on who's talking.

Nintendo's press release titled "Nintendo Records Best Holiday Selling Season in U.S. Video Game History" champions the cumulative sales the platform holder enjoyed over Christmas, combining the Wii figures (604.2K) GBA figures (850.7k) and the Nintendo DS sales (1.6M) into a single figure resulting in their "Throughout the November/December holiday shopping season, Nintendo accounted for more than half of all videogame hardware systems sold in America" statement.

Where Nintendo focused on the combined shipment numbers for its products -- and the complete sellout of the Nintendo Wii -- Sony's reactions to the NPD figures focused on revenue: "Sony Computer Entertainment America dominated the US computer entertainment marketplace in December, scoring its highest first-party sales month in company history, as well producing the top-selling home system." Because of the huge sales for GBA and DS Lite, Sony inserted the caveat "top-selling home system" to assert its "dominance" (the system in question is the PlayStation 2, not the PlayStation 3). Sony also points out that the sell-through during the first two months for the PlayStation 3 was higher than either of its predecessors. Despite only posting 197k units sold in November, Sony's PlayStation 3 still sold 687k units during the holiday season. During the same period last year when the Xbox 360 launched, Microsoft sold 634k units (Nintendo's Wii sold 1.08M units during the same two-month launch window). However, Sony seems to be having more success manufacturing and shipping the hardware than Microsoft had during the 2005 holiday season.

Read the full article over at 1up.com