For the third month in a row, Call of Duty 4 has outsold all other games. According to the January sales numbers recorded by NPD, the Xbox 360 version of the Infinity Ward shooter sold over 300,000 copies. Three other 360 titles cracked the top ten: Rock Band, Guitar Hero 3 and Burnout Paradise.

That brings the total sales for the 360 version of COD4 up to about 3.3 million. That's still well short of the nearly 5 million copies Halo 3 has sold, but Halo only sold a third as many copies in January. Furthermore, these figures aren't including the COD4 sales for other formats; Halo 3is a 360 exclusive but COD4 is also available for the PS3 and PC. The Playstation 3 version of COD4 came in at 8th on the NPD sales chart with 140,000 sold.

COD4's strong sales are sure to bolster its already-strong presence on Xbox Live. COD4 actually topped Halo 3 on three of the last four weeks in Xbox Live activity (as reported by Major Nelson's figures, based on number of unique users). It's the only game that's managed to best Halo on the Live charts since its September release.

Although the 360 outsold its competitors in terms of software, it tied the PSP for last in console sales with 230,000 units sold. Microsoft blamed its last place sales on temporary shortages (i.e. "they're just selling faster than we can make 'em!"). While overall hardware sales were down from last year, Sony had a very solid month. They sold 269,000 PS3's in January and were beaten out by Nintendo's Wii sales by only five thousand. Could the strong sales have anything to do with the Blu-ray format's recent advances in the format war with HD DVD?