One year after its official launch in US, Nintendo Wii is hotter than ever and it could be a serious candidate for the title of “Most Wanted Gadget For Christmas”.

Even Nintendo officials are surprised by the strong demand. Last month Nintendo sold 981,000 Wiis only in US and currently the company produces 1,8 million units per month. Still shortages are expected for Wii and according to media reports finding a Wii this Christmas is close to “mission imposbile”.

Why is Wii so popular? According to the analysts, Wii succeeded to bring virtual reality to the living room, allowing players to get up and become involved in the action.

As you might know already, the magic of the device lies in its controllers, which are hand-held joystick-like devices that allow players to simulate swinging a tennis racket, racing a car, shooting pool, boxing an opponent or lots of other activities. The movement of the controller is synchronised by Wii with the actions of characters or avatars on the screen. In a game of tennis, for instance, if you simulate a backhand swing in tennis, your player on- screen performs that same swing in real-time.

Players can pit themselves against the Wii console or have fun getting two or more people together, each equipped with a Wii controller, to play together.

The games for Wii are selling also like hot cakes. According to the data released by NPD Group for US market in November the latest game released for Nintendo Wii, Super Mario Galaxy, sold 1,12 million copies, while Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for  Xbox 360 sold 1,57 million, being the best selling game of the month.

Also the Wii version of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Activision) has sold 426,000 copies, while Wii Play sold 564,000 copies sold.

But while Wii remains the leader of the next-gen gaming console sales, Sony has also a wonderful November.

Finally, after a series of bad months, the sales of PS3 are kicking off.  Since Sony has slashed the price and unveiled new versions, PS3 outsold Nintendo Wii in Japan in November, while in US Sony’s gaming console reached 466,000 units sold.

This is a huge step forward compared to October’s sales when Sony sold only 121,000 PS3s and a confirmation of the announcement that since the price reduction the weekly sales have doubled and even tripled.

Following these good results, Kazuo Hirai, Sony Computer Entertainment's CEO, said for the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun that the worldwide sales of PS3 are expected to reach 11 million by the end of this fiscal year.

"The PlayStation3 is starting afresh as a console to play games with. Although pricing strategy is important, now we would like to put our strength in the number of software games," he said, quoted by AFP.

Also Howard Stringer, Sony’s CEO, said he is "much more confident" about the PlayStation 3.  

"The PlayStation 3 will come into its own because its [high-end games] are infinitely more fun, demanding and exciting. The question people quite rightly asked was if the PS3 was going to get through this early cycle. I feel much more confident about that now," Stringer said for The Guardian.

According to a site that tracks gaming console sales, VGChartz.com, Sony has sold so far 7,3 million PS3s. That means that in the next period the company should sell at least one million units per month worldwide.

As in December sales are generally twice November's, maybe Sony will sell somewhere around 800,000 units, especially because PS3 is also promoted as a BluRay player.

But how Sony will manage to reach its sales target in the next three months? As Hirai noted the beginning of the next year will bring some very expected game titles for PS3 and Halo 3 was a good example on how a game can boost the hardware sales.

And speaking about Halo and Xbox 360 Microsoft had also a good month in November. With 770.000 Xbox360s sold, Microsoft has its second best month since the last December.

Also four of the top ten games were on Xbox 360. Beside Activison’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the360 version of Assassin's Creed came in at number three with 980,000 units. Mass Effect, a RPG released on November 22, was number six with 473,000 units, while Halo 3 ranked nine with 387,000 units.