The NPD console sales numbers have been released for April, stuffed with fascinating content. How did the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Grand Theft Auto stack up against each other? Did Mario Kart Wii sell as many copies as expected? Will Nintendo continue its winning streak?

Before we break things down by company, it's important to point out that the games industry is still going strong. "The industry continues to set a blistering sales pace, and now shows a year-to-date increase of 31 percent over last year's record-setting revenues," NPD Group's Anita Frazier said.

Nintendo

Surprising absolutely no one, Nintendo took the number one and two slots in hardware sales. The Wii sold 714,200 units while the Nintendo DS moved 414,800 units (third place sales go to the PSP with 192,700 units). This month the Wii outsold the Playstation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, and Xbox 360... combined.

While Grand Theft Auto IV took up the first (360) and third (PS3) slots in software sales, Mario Kart Wii came in number two with 1.12 million units sold in April. Frazier calls it "a classic example of counter-programming." Wii Play came in number four with 360,000 units sold, Super Smash Bros. Brawl came in at number five with 326,000 units, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness and Time came in at numbers seven and eight, with both games selling 202,000 units. Guitar Hero III took the number nine slot with 152,000 units. All told, Nintendo games took up six of the top ten games for April.

Microsoft may choose to say that it's not competing with Nintendo, and that's probably a smart move. No one is even coming close to matching these sales numbers.

Microsoft

The Xbox 360 did outsell the PS3 with 188,000 units sold, but it only led by 900 units against the PlayStation 3. The 360 also had the best-selling game with Grand Theft Auto IV selling (1.85 million units) and the tenth best selling game with Call of Duty 4 (141,000 units).

Sony has already begun to take some of the shine out of Microsoft's Grand Theft Auto IV win. "There's a larger installed base right now on Xbox 360 than on PS3. So it's not surprising that there's going to be more selling on Xbox 360 than PS3. Having said that, we're really excited about the ratio," PlayStation senior vice president of marketing Peter Dille told N'Gai Croal. "If I had an installed base advantage of 3-1, I wouldn't be crowing too much about a 60-40 sales advantage."

Microsoft added a note about its online play in its reactions to the sales numbers. "Gamers eager to experience Grand Theft Auto IV online helped boost Xbox LIVE global membership totals to over 12 million this month... the Xbox LIVE service has doubled in membership in only one year's time." Microsoft also brought up the exclusive downloadable content coming to the 360 version of Grand Theft Auto IV.

Sony

As we've already noted, the PlayStation 3 came within 900 units of the Xbox 360 sales for April; the system moved 187,100 units in total. The PlayStation Portable moved 192,700 units to come in third place behind the monster that is Nintendo, and the PlayStation 2 saw quite the sales slip as it only moved 124,400 units in April. (In March, the classic system moved 216,000 units.)

Sony had two entries in the top ten games list. The PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto IV came in at number three with 1 million units sold and Gran Turismo 5: Prologue took the sixth slot with 224,000 units sold.

Hardware in general didn't see the bump that many expected. Anita Frazier has a few thoughts on why. "It was surprising not to see bigger hardware sales for the Xbox 360 and the PS3 given the release of GTA IV. However, since the game was only in the market for 5 days during this reporting period, that sales lift could very well be evident in May data."

It's hard to imagine a time when Microsoft or Sony are able to make any headway against Nintendo's impenetrable hold on this generation, but the race for number three behind the Nintendo Wii and DS continues.