Market research firm NPD released April data on Thursday putting Nintendo’sWii on top.

Nintendo also released their own press release using the NPD numbers:

According to NPD, the Wii outsold Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3. The Wii moved 714,000 units in April bringing it’s total US sales since launch to 9.5 Million units.

NPD’s numbers show that Microsoft milked the cash cow for 188,000 units and Sony, 187,100 PS3′s.

Perhaps having a bit of advanced knowledge of the upcoming numbers, Microsoft released a statement of their own on Wednesday that they’d reached the 10 Million units sold mark, making the Xbox 360 the first  next-gen console to reach this landmark. Microsoft gave itself a pat on the back, arguing that this is the landmark that that usually indicates the eventual winner of each console generation.

Speaking of April, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto IV launched on the 29th on Xbox 360 and PS3. Granted, GTA IV had only been out for 2 days last month, and box Microsoft and Sony saw an increase in these sales, and yet Wii still came out on top.

NPD’s data on GTA IV places the game in two of the three top slots of software sales, with the Xbox version cashing in with 1.85M copies, and the PS3 version selling 1M units.

Again, Nintendo backs that ass up with Mario Kart Wii coming in as the second best selling game for the month of April, pushing 1.12M bananas out the door. Overall, 6 out of the top 10 best selling games during April were Wii games.

Let’s not forget about the other white meat: handheld gamers. The Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP outsold both the Xbox 360 and the PS3. The DS cranked out 414,800 receipts, with the PSP paling in comparison at only 192,700.

Overall, NPD’s research indicates what we’ve already mentioned, even though the economy sucks, the gaming industry is still partying like it’s 1999, with total sales in April racking up $1.23 billion. Yep, that’s Billion. That’s a 47% increase over the $839 million only one year earlier. Likewise, hardware sales were up 26% from $339 million in April 2007 to $426 million in April 2008.