You might have noticed that the Wii is rather popular at the moment. In fact, on the back of recently released US sales figures some are already predicting that the console’s lifetime sales will beat those of the all-conquering Playstation 2.

Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter will surely be miffed to have missed out on this one. However he’s been beaten to the punch by the tech bloggers at Venture Beat who, while mulling over the recent NPD group figures, noticed that Wii sales to date are already well ahead of the PS2’s over a similar time-frame.

More specifically the Wii has shifted 17.5 million in the US in its first 26 months since launch, whereas the Playstation 2 managed just 15.9 million. In other words the Wii is currently 10% in front of the world record-breaking PS2. If that pattern holds, reckons Venture Beat, the Wii will have sold 55 million in the States and 154 million globally by 2014. In comparison the PS2’s lifetime total stands at a mere 140 million.

In stark contrast to all the above the Xbox 360 has sold 9.2 million in the US in its first 26 months and the PS3 6.79 million, which, as Venture Beat is very quick to note, puts it on a par with the dear old Gamecube - hilarious!

But all is not yet lost for Sony, even if it sometimes looks that way. In the first place they’re eyeing a 10-year lifespan for the PS3, so there‘s plenty of time to turn things around. And then, of course, the console market is much bigger this generation so Sony could still make a tidy profit with a smaller share of a larger overall audience. At least that’s the theory. Meantime, well, the figures speak for themselves eh…