According to new video game comparison site VGChartz.com, Nintendo's Wii is nearing the Xbox 360 in terms of total consoles sold, despite the year-long availability advantage enjoyed by Microsoft’s console. VGChartz, which claims to base its figures on over-the-counter sales data from a selection of retailers around the world, puts the Wii at 10.10 million units sold to date worldwide, just behind the 360's 10.32 million.

The Wii has been successful in both the US and Japanese market, while the 360s failure in the Asian region sees the console struggling to make up the difference. Meanwhile, VGChartz predicts that the PS3 has shipped 4.11 million systems, including 1.08 million in Japan, 1.78 million in the US and 1.25 million elsewhere.

Whether you take the numbers with a grain of salt or not, there is no doubt that the casual games and innovative gameplay strategy has paid off for Nintendo so far. However, it will be very interesting to see how the Wii performs in the future when high-definition graphics have really kicked in, will its appeal wear out? We’ll have to wait and see where this goes.