The Xbox 360 outsold the Wii, which outsold the PlayStation 3.

That, in a nutshell, is how the crucial holiday shopping season went for the video game industry's latest consoles. But that battle does not tell the whole story of a curious December.

Over all, the industry sold $3.7 billion of hardware, software and accessories in the United States last month, up from $2.9 billion a year earlier. For the full year, sales were $12.5 billion, the industry's highest returns ever, according to widely watched figures released Thursday by NPD Group, a market research firm.

During December, Sony in particular turned in surprisingly strong sales — but not for its new PlayStation 3.

In a development that industry analysts said spoke to the strength of the video game market and the lure of low prices, the best-selling console during the holiday season in America was Sony's six-year-old PlayStation 2.

Americans bought 1.4 million PlayStation 2s during the period. That was more than the Xbox 360, which sold 1.1 million units; the Nintendo Wii, which sold 604,000; and the PlayStation 3, which sold 491,000.

For Japan, Enterbrain, a game magazine publisher, released sales estimates this past week that showed Sony had fallen far short of its goal of selling a million PlayStation 3s there last year. Sony sold 534,336 of the consoles from their debut in Japan on Nov. 11 through last Sunday, Enterbrain said.

By contrast, the Tokyo-based publisher reported that Nintendo had sold 1.14 million units of the Wii by the same date, even though the Wii went on sale three weeks after the PlayStation 3.

But the overall sales figures for the PlayStation 3, and in particular the Wii, fell below expectations of industry analysts.

"The biggest surprise is the Wii," said Mike Hickey, a research analyst with Janco Partners. He said analysts had projected that Nintendo would sell around 1.2 million Wiis in the United States, twice what they wound up selling. Hickey and other analysts had estimated that Sony would sell 500,000 to 600,000 PlayStation 3s and that Microsoft would sell 1.1 million to 1.3 million 360s.

For Sony and Nintendo, the real trouble was not demand but supply, Janco said. "It probably means that Nintendo missed its goal" of shipping four million Wiis worldwide by the end of the year, he said.

Some of the PlayStation 2's success can be attributed to the manufacturers' inability to make and ship enough of the PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles, which analysts said were gobbled up as quickly as they appeared on shelves.

But the PlayStation 2 also sold particularly well compared with itself; its December sales were just 4 percent lower than a year earlier, NPD said, despite the lure of more advanced machines.

"I fell out of my chair when I saw those numbers," said Anita Frazier, an industry analyst with NPD.

Frazier said one reason for the PlayStation 2's relative success is that its sale price of $129 is considerably less than that of the Wii, at $249; the Xbox 360, at $299 or $399, depending on the model; and the PlayStation 3, at $499 or $599.

But buyers of the PlayStation 2, while perhaps inspired by the buzz created by the new console wars, were not necessarily the same people who might get a Wii or PlayStation 3.

"It's reaching that value customer you see at the end of the cycle," said David Hufford, director of Xbox product management at Microsoft.

But he said the PlayStation 2 figures were nevertheless solid: "It's a good number for them."

Given the short supply of the new Sony and Nintendo machines, Frazier and other analysts said it was far too soon to declare a winner among the next-generation consoles.

"We can't tell anything from these numbers," she said. "If we had five million available, we'd have a truer sense of consumer demand."

The Xbox 360 benefited from ample supplies and the large library of games it had built up over the past year.

Over all, Microsoft has sold 4.5 million Xbox 360s in the United States since the console was introduced in November 2005. Since their introductions last November, PlayStation 3 has sold 687,000 consoles and Wii, 1.1 million, NPD reported.

In software, the top seller in December was "Gears of War," a shooting game for the 360 that sold 816,000 copies. The second big seller was "Guitar Hero II" for the PlayStation 2, which sold 805,000 copies.

Of the top 10 console games sold in December, two were for the Xbox 360 and four were for the PlayStation 2.

None were for the Wii or the PlayStation 3, though that is no surprise, given the scarcity of the consoles.

The slow sales could spell trouble for Sony, which needs the PlayStation 3 to be a hit to overcome years of lackluster profit and to polish its brand image.

"The biggest surprise is the Wii," said Mike Hickey, a research analyst with Janco Partners. He said analysts had projected that Nintendo would sell around 1.2 million Wiis in the United States, twice what they wound up selling. Hickey and other analysts had estimated that Sony would sell 500,000 to 600,000 PlayStation 3s and that Microsoft would sell 1.1 million to 1.3 million 360s.

"We can't tell anything from these numbers," she said. "If we had five million available, we'd have a truer sense of consumer demand."