Nintendo, the runaway leader in the video game business, is priming the market for its new Internet-connected handheld gaming system and adding storage capabilities to the best-selling Nintendo Wii.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said during the Game Developers Conference today in San Francisco that the Wii has now sold more than 50 million units since launching in 2006.

Despite mounting job losses and under-water mortgages, Americans kept buying video games last month. Total spending on the category was $1.47 billion in February, up 10 percent from a year earlier, according to data from NPD Group this afternoon.

The Wall Street Journal's report today on the woes in Sony's gaming business is likely bringing smiles to faces in Redmond, where rivals Microsoft and Nintendo of America are based.

This story on Nintendo's through-the-roof Wii sales -- in which a Nintendo executive reiterated the company's commitment to increase inventories in the U.S. by 50 percent to alleviate shortages -- doesn't jibe with the experience of reader Scott Milburn.

"For weeks, we have been searching for a Wii for our family this Christmas, and it is amazingly difficult," he wrote in an e-mail.

Read on for an account of their search.

Microsoft's blockbuster first-party title for the holidays, "Gears of War 2," was the best-selling game last month, helping the company's Xbox 360 business turn in its best November yet. Microsoft moved 836,000 consoles in the U.S. compared with Sony, which sold 378,000 PlayStation 3s. But the big winner, according to NPD Group data released this afternoon, was Nintendo and its 2.04 million Wiis sold.

Nintendo had what it's calling industry record breaking sales of the Wii console and DS handheld system in November.

"We believe that Wii sales will top 2 million and DS sales will surpass 1.5 million for the month of November," Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo's executive vice president of sales and marketing, told me in an interview this morning. "And for both of these products, this is going to be a new all-time sales record for video game systems in any month outside of December."

The best-selling video game in August, according to The NPD Group, was Madden NFL '09. Nearly 2.2 million units were sold in the U.S. After reading a great essay on the game's namesake, John Madden, I'm wondering how many were purchased by aspiring (or actual) NFL defensive coordinators.

NPD Group just released data confirming what Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime predicted in February. His company's Wii console sold 666,700 units in the U.S. in June, bringing its total install base to 10.9 million, taking the lead from Microsoft's Xbox 360.

LOS ANGELES -- Nintendo has gathered another big crowd of media and game-industry partners inside the Kodak Theater on Hollywood Boulevard this morning for its E3 press conference.

Here are some of the questions hanging over Nintendo, the breakout success story of the current-generation console competition:

Too often, we focus on the video game (and Internet search) competition in the U.S., to the exclusion of the rest of the world. But on the games front, the battle for Europe during the current console generation is more interesting and perhaps more up for grabs than in the U.S.

And if Microsoft Xbox boss Don Mattrick wants to back up the claim he made today -- that "Xbox 360 will sell more consoles worldwide this generation than PlayStation 3" -- he'll have to win in Europe.

LOS ANGELES -- With Microsoft's press conference about to begin, Nintendo is stealing some thunder with an announcement of its own.

Nintendo announced a "Wii MotionPlus" accessory for the simple, motion-sensing Wii Remote -- the feature that distinguishes Nintendo's console from the competition.

Ballroom dancing, shuffle board, lounging on deck with a pina colada, hitting the buffet again and again. Great cruise activities. But you've got to be able to show it all off for the folks back home. To that end, Holland America Cruise Lines is bringing Microsoft aboard to offer digital media workshops on its ships.

I assume NPD will be out with its monthly U.S. game industry figures later this afternoon. For now, Nintendo has chimed in early with an e-mail crowing about its sales in March: More than 720,000 Wiis sold, "representing the highest monthly sales total outside of" November and December, the holiday sales period.

Updated with the full NPD report after the jump.

In a pleasant break from the Microsoft-Yahoo news, an MTV News report out yesterday suggests that Microsoft is at work on a controller for the Xbox 360 that would mimic the successful motion-sensing remote controller for the Wii from Nintendo. Nintendo's top U.S. exec said in February that competitors would have a tough time copying his company's model.

For the second month in a row, Sony's PlayStation 3 outsold Microsoft's Xbox 360, according to U.S. sales data for February from The NPD Group.

As the two higher-end consoles duke it out, Nintendo's Wii, which is in the midst of several sought-after game and accessory launches this spring, continued to run away with the market.