Yesterday, Research firm NPD Funworld released its video game sales figures report for April 2007. Nintendo once again crushed their competition with the DS and Wii - despite continuing console shortages - taking the first two spots with 471,000 and 360,000 units sold respectively, while Sony's PS2 continues to outsell Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PS3 taking the third spot with 194,000 units sold.

Things are not looking good for Sony's PS3 selling 82,000 units and taking the seventh place behind the Game Boy Advance and down from 130,000 units sold on March. In all fairness, March's report was a 5-week period so a 20% drop was expected, however Microsoft's Xbox 360 did managed to keep steady sales figures with 174,000 units sold and taking the fifth place in the chart.

Sony positioned its console as "the Mercedes Benz of the video game field" at a high launch price, with its included Blu-ray drive being one of the main selling points. However as standalone Blu-ray player prices continue to fall things could get worse for Sony's console.

The report also includes software sales figures, where Nintendo also dominated the first positions in the chart.

On the software side, Nintendo ruled the top four spots with the two new Pokemon games taking first and second. Pokemon Diamond sold an astounding 1.045 million units, while the less popular Pokemon Pearl moved a still impressive 712,000 copies. A pair of Wii games, Super Paper Mario and Wii Play, took spots three and four, respectively.
The video game industry remains strong with $838.6 million in U.S. sales in April, a 20 percent growth over the same period last year. Overall console sales put the Xbox 360 at 5.4 million units sold, followed by the Wii at 2.5 million and the PS3 at 1.3 million.