PlayStation 4 beats out Xbox One as the best-selling console

New data shows that Sony's console sales were nearly double those of Microsoft in January. Meanwhile, video games sales fell compared with the same time last year

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

In the battle for the best-selling console, Sony's PlayStation 4 has come out on top -- beating Microsoft's Xbox One -- for the month of January.

Research firm The NPD Group released new data on Thursday showing that hardware sales were up 17 percent to $241 million in January compared to the same time last year. However, since January 2013 was five weeks and January 2014 was four weeks -- normalized sales of gaming hardware shows a 47 percent increase. And, PlayStation led these sales.

"PS4 led overall hardware sales this month, followed by the Xbox One," The NPD Group's Liam Callahan said in an e-mail.

While The NPD Group didn't go into specific numbers, Bloomberg reports that PlayStation 4sales were nearly double those of Xbox One. This is a reverse from December when Xbox One sales reportedly were higher than PlayStation 4.

The top five best selling games for January were Call of Duty: Ghosts, NBA 2K14, Battlefield 4, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, and Grand Theft Auto V, respectively.As far as sales of video games, the numbers are a bit bleaker. Total sales of physical games fell 21 percent from last year to $664 million, according to The NPD Group. However, if digital downloads, used games, social networking games, and rentals are included consumers spent roughly $1.05 billion in January. Additionally, normalizing the sales for 2013's five-week period, game sales appear to be down just 1 percent.

Data released by The NPD Group earlier this week showed that the US video game market appeared to be stuck in a holding pattern in 2013. While there weren't any significant declines in consumer spending throughout the year, growth tallied up just 1 percent. However, that's better than years past, since it was the first time the market had experienced growth in the last two years.