Sony‘s PlayStation 3 was far from being top of the list in terms of last month’s U.S. sales, but it did manage something: go ahead of Microsoft’s Xbox 360, for the second time this year. According to a report released by NPD, Nintendo once again managed to outsell its rivals, in a month that brought a 34 percent increase in sales compared to January.

Nintendo Wii remains on top of the list as the best selling console in February, with 432,000 units, followed by Sony’s PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3. Xbox was a bit behind, with 255,000 units sold, but Microsoft found an explanation for that: first of all, the Xbox sells more units worldwide than PS3, which lead them to the conclusion that these figures don’t say much about the overall preferences of gamers, and secondly, Microsoft failed to meet sales expectations due to inventory shortages, after an incredible high demand during holiday season.

“While hardware inventory issues at retail may still be lingering post-holiday, the fact that all now-gen systems generated significant year-over-year hardware sales increases indicates the situation is coming into balance faster than it did last year,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

This is how the hardware/software Top 6 sales chart looked like in February 2008:

Hardware:
588,000 – Nintendo DS
432,000 – Nintendo Wii
352,000 – PlayStation 2
281,000 – PlayStation 3
255,000 – Xbox 360
243,000 – PlayStation Portable

Software:

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare* (360) / Activision / 7-Nov 296.2K
Devil May Cry 4* (360) / Capcom 8-Feb / 295.2k
Wii Play W/ Remote* (Wii) / Nintendo / 7-Feb 289.7K
Devil May Cry 4* (PS3) / Capcom / 8-Feb / 233.5K
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock* (Wii) / Activision / 7-Oct / 222.9K
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games (DS) / Sega / 8-Jan / 205.6K
Lost Odyssey (360) / Microsoft / 8-Feb 203.6K
Turok (360) Touchstone/ 8-Jan/ 197.7K
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock* (PS2) Activision / 7-Oct / 183.8K
Rock Band* (360) / MTV Games, Electronic Arts / 7-Nov / 161.8K

“I was most surprised by the PS2 hardware sales numbers this month. While it certainly has earned its spot among the now-gen slate of console systems because of it staying power in the marketplace, the fact that it realized such significant growth this month is really a testament to its broad adoption and the response of consumers to promotional activity at retail,” Frazier also said.

The thing that surprises us the most is that Sony managed to outsell Microsoft’s Xbox for the second consecutive month, and if we take into consideration Microsoft’s own estimations that a fresh supply of consoles is to be expected in April, we’ll just have to wait and see how Sony does then, and if these figures reflect Sony’s PS3 upward trend or just a circumstantial position on the market.