anuary was an especially good month for the PlayStation 3, as evidenced by sales figures released by the NPD Group. The system is continually hyped as being the best Blu-Ray player on the market, which might have helped boost sales, though its increasingly impressive 2008 lineup certainly didn’t hurt things for Sony, either. In January, 269,000 units were sold, outpacing the Xbox 360 by nearly 40,000 systems. Microsoft says that hardware shortages were partially responsible for the upset. Shortages didn’t hurt things for Nintendo’s Wii, which moved 274,000 systems.

On the software side, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare took the number one spot, with Wii Play and the Wii version of Guitar Hero III rounding out the top three.

Here are the complete NPD lists:

Hardware
Wii--274,000 units
PLAYSTATION 3--269,000 units
Nintendo DS--251,000 units
PlayStation Portable--230,000 units
Xbox 360--230,000 units

Top 10 software sales
1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360)--330,900
2. Wii Play (Wii)--298,100
3. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Wii)--239,600
4. Rock Band (Xbox 360)--183,800
5. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Xbox 360)--182,700
6. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)--172,000
7. Burnout Paradise (Xbox 360)--144,100
8. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PS3)--140,000
9. Mario Party DS (DS)--138,500
10. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (DS)--133,000