Seriously, you're going to be blown away by these Nintendo DS sales figures for the five weeks that made up the December NPD reporting period:

December 2007 U.S. Hardware Sales

Nintendo DS - 2.47 million

Wii - 1.35 million

Xbox 360 - 1.26 million

PlayStation 2 - 1.10 million

PlayStation Portable - 1.06 million

PlayStation 3 – 798k

The benefit of the holiday shopping season is crystal clear here. Except for the tough-luck PS3, every major game system sold over a million units in December. Nintendo sold as many DS systems in a December week (just under 500k on the average) as it did in entire months earlier in the year. As for the Wii, the promised "surge" of additional supply didn't turn out to be much. Comparing last month's data with this month's data, Nintendo was only able to manage an additional 25,000 Wii units or so per week. Considering the outrageous demand for the console, one has to think that Nintendo could have sold a lot more Wiis had the supply been available.

With the December numbers calculated, the NPD Group has released its findings for console sales for all of 2007:

2007 Overall U.S. Hardware Sales

Nintendo DS - 8.50 million

Wii - 6.29 million

Xbox 360 - 4.62 million

PlayStation 2 - 3.97 million

PlayStation Portable - 3.82 million

PlayStation 3 - 2.56 million

Here's an interesting tidbit: 47% of DS sales in 2007 came in the last two months of the year. Here's something more interesting: The PS3 and PSP both saw 49% of their respective yearly sales also occur in November and December combined. Regardless of how successful a game system is during a year, a good holiday push will do wonders to boost the installed user base.

Now for the software numbers:

December 2007 U.S. Top Ten Software Sales

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360) - 1.47 million

Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) - 1.40 million

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PS2) - 1.25 million

Wii Play w/Remote (Wii) - 1.08 million

Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360) - 894k

Halo 3 (Xbox 360) - 743k

Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day (DS) - 660k

Madden NFL 08 (PS2) - 655k

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Xbox 360) - 625k

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (Wii) – 613k

The usual suspects make up most of the top part of the top ten. Things get a little more interesting starting at the No. 7 and 8 spots, with Brain Age 2 and the PlayStation 2 version of Madden NFL 08 selling at a very high rate. Interesting, because both games came out in August and weren't on the charts for a few months after their respective releases. Why the sudden spike during December? Mario & Sonic is also something of an anomaly, since it was released at the beginning of November and didn't place on last month's software charts. Weird.

2007 Overall U.S. Top Ten Software Sales

Halo 3 (Xbox 360) - 4.82 million

Wii Play w/Remote (Wii) - 4.12 million

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360) - 3.04 million

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PS2) - 2.72 million

Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) - 2.52 million

Pokemon Diamond (DS) - 2.48 million

Madden NFL 08 (PS2) - 1.90 million

Guitar Hero II (PS2) - 1.89 million

Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360) - 1.87 million

Mario Party 8 (Wii) - 1.82 million

Had the NPD Group combined the two Pokemon versions, the game would have likely neared the four million mark, probably making it the No. 3 best-selling game of 2007. (Then again, Call of Duty 4 had impressive sales on the PS3, as did the multiple versions of Guitar Hero III.) Wii Play consistently sold well throughout the year, making it the second-best game of last year. Overall, Nintendo had four games in the top ten.

Finally, the NPD Group has tallied the figures for the gaming industry as a whole in the United States. In 2007, a grand total of $17.9 billion was spent on video games in America, a 43% increase from the sum total of 2006. "While I wouldn't count on similar growth in 2008," says Anita Frazier of NPD, "I would expect to see 2008 increase over 2007, with more growth (proportionately) coming from software sales. While we will continue to see strong hardware sales, particularly if prices come down again, the spotlight now turns from hardware to software."