Nintendo’s Wii top-selling video game console in U.S.

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Nintendo said Monday that its globally popular Wii has become the top-selling video game console in the United States, a crown coveted by rivals Microsoft and Sony.

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Market-tracking firm NPD Group reports that 666,000 Wii consoles were sold in the United States in June, raising the total sales count in the country to nearly 10.9 million units.

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Will sales eclipsed those of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 consoles, which went on the market a year before the Wii was released in November of 2006, according to industry figures.

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Earlier this year, U.S. sales of Xbox 360 consoles topped 10 million and prompted Microsoft to tout the milestone as a sign Xbox is destined to be more popular than Wii and Sony’s PlayStation 3.

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The rivals battled this week at an Electronic Entertainment Expo, each claiming to be the inevitable victor in the video game console war.

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Wii consoles are credited with expanding the video game market beyond “hardcore gamers” with simple motion-sensing controllers and group-oriented games.

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“As we have demonstrated this week during the E3 summit, Wii continues to pioneer new ways for people to interact with their video games and with one another,” Nintendo marketing vice president Cammie Dunaway said in a statement.

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The Japanese video game giant scored another victory with its DS portable devices, selling more than 783,000 in the United States in June to raise total sales there to 20.8 million units.

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