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Nintendo sold more high-end video game consoles in the U.S. in the month of March than Sony and Microsoft combined, according to data released Friday by market researcher NPD Group.

Nintendo sold 721,000 Wii consoles in March, according to NPD. Microsoft sold 262,000 Xbox 360 units while Sony sold 257,000 PlayStation 3 systems.

Nintendo Wii sales were sparked by the recent launch of the hit game Super Smash Bros. Brawl -- a Wii exclusive. NPD said the game sold 2.7 million copies in March, making it the month's top selling title by far.

Two Xbox 360 titles, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 and Army Of Two, were the second and third top sellers, but neither cracked the one million sales mark.

Wii Play, God Of War: Chains Of Olympus, and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII rounded out the top five games sold in March.

Nintendo also dominated the portable system market. It sold 698,000 Nintendo DS units. Sony's PlayStation Portable counted sales of 297,000.

Sony also sold 216,000 PlayStation 2 systems in March, according to NPD.

Nintendo's dominance of the console market may be spurring copycat efforts in its rivals.

MTV News earlier this month reported that Microsoft is developing a Wii-style remote that would allow Xbox 360 users to physically interact with their games by waving around the controller. That sort of interactivity has proven to be a highly popular feature of Nintendo's Wii system, currently the only platform that supports such virtual play.

MTV also posted a sketch of a rough mock up of the device on its Web site.

Microsoft has declined to comment on the report.