Here are the number of game consoles sold in the U.S. in December, ranked from best-selling to worst:

Hardware - December
Nintendo DS - 1.6 mm
PS2 - 1.4 mm
Xbox 360 - 1.1 mm
PSP - 953.2 K
GBA - 850.7 K
Wii - 604.2 K
PS3 - 490.7 K

And here are console sales life to date, again ranked by sales:

Hardware - Life to date
PS2 - 37.1 mm
GBA - 35.1 mm
Nintendo DS - 9.2 mm
PSP - 6.7 mm
Xbox 360 - 4.5 mm
Wii - 1.1 mm
PS3 - 687.3 K

What's the takeway?

The Wii had a really strong launch. The Wii and PS3 basically went on sale at the same time, yet Nintendo managed to sell almost half a million more Wiis than Sony was able to sell PS3s. The Wii launch also went better than the 360 launch a year ago, when Microsoft sold about 600,000 consoles in the same time.

That said, Microsoft did have a strong holiday season this year, outselling everything except the crazy-popular DS and the much-cheaper PS2. It's interesting to think how many Wii systems Nintendo could have sold if supply hadn't been a problem.

But then again, it would also be interesting to know how many Xbox 360s Microsoft could have sold a year ago if it hadn't had any supply problems.

Either way, Sony clearly has some issues. The PS3 came in last place in holiday sales, and it's getting harder to blame the scant sales on limited supply. Mountains of PS3 consoles are now appearing in retail stores, and all anecdotal evidence suggests they're not selling all that quickly.

The Wii, on the other hand, remains as elusive as a four-leaf clover. That white-hot demand is creating its own set of problems for Nintendo -- will casual buyers have moved on to something else by the time the Wii is plentiful? -- but they're the sorts of problems everyone thought Sony would be dealing with.

Could Sony really go from first to worst in a single generation? Could be.

Other interesting tidbits:

*The PSP may never dethrone the DS, but it's actually amazing how much of a challenge Sony's portable system has presented for Nintendo's previously-impregnable portable empire. Everyone expected Sony to kick the DS to the curb, and it hasn't. But it's easy to forget just dominant Nintendo has been in this space for well over a decade, and Sony's achievements really are impressive.

*Overall video game sales (console hardware and software, as well as portable hardware and software) totaled $12.5 billion in 2006 in the U.S., up from $10.5 billion a year ago. That's a 19 percent growth rate.

*Those sales numbers don't include PC game sales. That data comes out next week, and it will be interesting to see if NPD has found a way to account for revenue from subscriptions to online games like World of Warcraft.

*Incidentally, Blizzard announced this week that it has surpassed the 8 million subscriber milestone for World of Warcraft. What's interesting is that while 2 million of those subscribers are in North America and 1.5 million in Europe, 3.5 million are in China. That's right. There are as many WoW players in North America and Europe combined as in China alone. It would be interesting to know how many of those Chinese players are professional gold farmers versus actual gamers.