New York - Sales of Take-Two Interactive's (NASD: TTWO) "Grand Theft Auto IV" helped boost U.S. video game sales by in April by 47% from a year ago, to $1.23 billion. Despite sales of 1.85 million copies of Grand Theft Auto for Xbox 360 and 1 million copies for the PlayStation 3, this oddly did not translate into increased sales of the consoles, which in fact saw shipments decrease from March.

Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) sold 188,000 Xbox 360s in April, down from 262,000 in March, while Sony (NYSE: SNE) sold 187,000 PlayStation 3s last month, down from 257,000 in March.

"It was surprising not to see bigger hardware sales for the Xbox 360 and the PS3 given the release of GTA IV," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

"However, since the game was only in the market for 5 days during this reporting period, that sales lift could very well be evident in May data."

Meanwhile, Nintendo's Wii soundly beat them both with sales of 714,000 units, pushing overall hardware sales up 26%, to $426.2 million.

The record-setting early sales of Grand Theft Auto (2.85 million), along with Nintendo's "Mario Kart Wii" boosted game software sales by 68%, to $654.7 million in April.

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