Cumulative sales of Nintendo’s Wii have overtaken those of the Xbox 360, making it the world’s best-selling next-generation games console in spite of having been on the market a year less than Microsoft’s machine.

The move puts Nintendo, a quirky Kyoto-based company dwarfed in size by Microsoft, back squarely at the top of the console market, a position it last held 17 years ago with the Nintendo and Super Nintendo consoles.