Nintendo's Wii has overtaken Microsoft's Xbox 360 to become the best selling games console in the US.

Market research firm NPD Group said that some 666,000 Wii consoles were sold in North America in June, bringing total US sales figures to 10.9 million since its release in November 2006.

The latest figures mean that the Nintendo console is now outselling Microsoft's Xbox 360, which has been on sale a year longer.

Nintendo also appears to be winning on the handheld console front, reporting sales of more than 783,000 units of its DS portable device in the US during June amounting to total sales of 20.8 million units.

The video games industry continues to defy the credit crunch, generating $8.3bn in sales in the US alone for the first half of 2008, up 36 per cent on the same period in 2007.

Meanwhile a new study from research firm GfK NOP suggests that 83 per cent of respondents to a survey believe that the Wii improves family cohesion.

By contrast only 52 per cent think that the PlayStation 3 fosters family interaction, while 49 per cent said that the Xbox 360 improved family togetherness.