According to the figures from the US based NPD Group, this year started out very well for Sony in North America with its PS3 outselling the Xbox 360 in both January and February.

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And it looked like Autumn (or Fall as Americans call it) was going to continue the trend with some US analysts saying that the PlayStation 3 was going to top Xbox 360 for that month as well.

However the NPD Group has released its numbers, and it looks like in March, Sony came in third for the first time this year.

In fact the PS3 was only the fifth-best-selling console in March–after the Wii, Nintendo’s DS, Sony’s PlayStation Portable, and the Xbox 360 and barley managed to outsell the Sony PlayStation 2.

The NPD figures are:

Wii	721K
Nintendo DS	698K
Playstation Portable	297K
Xbox 360	262K
Playstation 3	257K
Playstation 2	216K