In a month that saw steeper declines in the US video games market than most people had expected, Xbox 360 has emerged as a surprise victor in the hardware sector.

Though hardware sales as a whole fell 20 per cent year-on-year to $426.4m, Microsoft’s machine succeeded in securing the top home console sales spot, despite the ongoing popularity of the Wii and the fact that 2010 is expected to be a very strong year for PS3.

In total, Xbox 360 sold 422k machines – ahead of Wii’s 398k units sales. PS3 shifted 360k units and it was yet another strong month for PS2, which edged over the 100k unit sales mark.

Handheld machines still boss the sector, though, with DS emerging as the overall sales champ thanks to unit sales of 613k. PSP managed 133k.

Year-to-date hardware sales are down 21 per cent compared to 2009 at $780.1m.

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“Overall hardware unit sales were down, but certain platforms enjoyed an increase over last year,” NPD’s Anita Frazier stated. “Xbox 360 nabbed the top-spot among the three console systems for the first time since September 2007 when Halo 3 as released.

“PS3 enjoyed a 30 per cent increase over last year, even while retail supply is reported to remain constrained.

“DS sales continue to remain quite strong, even leading up to the launch of the DSi XL later this month on March 28th, which will have 7 days of sales during our March reporting month.”