Cheats-Area.com

Whoever said that 2008 is the year of PlayStation 3's rebound was damn right: according to NPD's latest estimates Sony's console not only surpassed the Xbox 360, but was even close to topping Wii sales.

After reporting impressive sales for the critical Christmas shopping season, Sony is now enjoying a sales-bump that is likely to stir the waters of the console-war even more. The former king and its pageant (the mighty Wii and the Halo 3-stuffed Xbox 360) are experiencing shortages and this probably led to the poor sales registered in the first month of 2008.

Here are the numbers: Wii sold about 274,000 units, the PlayStation 3 about 269,000 units and the Xbox 360 is now on the fifth place, with "only" 230,000 units. Between X60 and the third place are the Nintendo DS (251,000 units) and the PlayStation Portable (230,000).

Jack Tretton, Sony's big kahuna, is more than pleased with the sales-numbers (any bonus for the employees Jack?...):
"Coming off a great holiday sales season we see strong momentum behind PS3 in 2008, and feel confident about the year ahead. We have an exceptionally diverse lineup of exclusive games, from Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Resistance 2 to more mainstream games such as LittleBigPlanet and SingStar. Beyond that, 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." While it's no surprise that the Wii is still ruthlessly dominating the market, despite the continuous shortages, it is quite surprising that Microsoft experiences the same supply-problems. Contacted by GameReviews.com, Microsoft's spokesperson David Dennis, said that the Redmond behemoth was taken by surprise by the high interest from gamers for its console:

"[Microsoft] did not forecast the level of demand that we would see throughout the holidays, and we didn’t manufacture as many units as we should have". He added that "demand [is] outpacing supply demand at this point. We’re working as hard as we can to replenish supply with all of our retailers, but we are aware of supply issues across the board at most major retailers in the U.S."

According to VGChartz.com, there are currently more than 21.49 million Wiis, 16.98 million Xbox 360s and 9.94 million PlayStation 3s out there, with David Reeves, Sony UK honcho, estimating that the CELL-powered console with surpass X60's install base in PAL areas by this summer.