The anticipated battle between Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 has become a sideshow to the unexpected rise of Nintendo's Wii as the new-generation game console of choice.

Once a dark-horse contender, the Wii has outsold both its competitors in recent months. According to sales data from the NPD Group, the Wii sold 335 000 units in February to the Xbox 360's 228 000 and the PS3's 127 000.

Of the three new-generation game consoles, the Xbox 360 has sold the most at 5-million units in the US alone, but that's mainly due to the fact that it was released a full year earlier than either the Wii or the PS3. Since they first hit shelves last November, the PS3 has sold 1,1-million units while the Wii has tallied 1,86-million.

What's interesting is that the Wii achieved this feat not by offering a lot of multimedia bells and whistles like its competitors do, but by simply focusing on games.

"We've seen Nintendo expand the marketplace and grow it beyond the traditional gamer," said Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research.

Its innovation is the Wii controller, a motion-sensitive wand that allows gamers to control the action by waving the device about rather than jostling a joystick and pushing buttons.

That controller and the games developed for it have captured the imagination of both the gamer and their family members.

So what does that say about Sony and Microsoft, which also are hoping to attract non-gamers by positioning their consoles as home-entertainment hubs?

Both consoles contain hard drives to store content and allow users to stream music and video content from their home computers.

"Microsoft and Sony clearly have larger aspirations for the game console in the living room as a portal for some of the other services they're trying to sell,'' Gartenberg said. "The hardcore gamer may be the one purchasing the console, but other family members may use the other features. Nintendo's approach has been to get non-gamers playing games.''

According to NPD Group spokesperson David Riley, the Wii's "gaming first'' message is much easier for non-gamers to grasp than Microsoft and Sony's more complicated home-entertainment message.

"All of these strategies are viable,'' Gartenberg said. "It's not a question of one over the other. Nintendo has demonstrated that there are multiple ways to get into the hearts and minds of other family members."

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