Sony's PlayStation 4 again outsold Microsoft's Xbox One in the USA during April, the fourth straight month the Japanese-made console has stayed at number one.

While Sony did not reveal PS4 sales figures for April, US market research firm NPD Group confirmed that the PS4 did indeed sell more than the Xbox One's 115,000 units. NPD also noted that console sales for the Xbox One and PS4 sales more than doubled the combined sales of PS3 and 360 hardware in their first six months of sales.

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On the other hand, sales of PS4 software combined with Xbox One software rose over 40 percent compared to sales of the PS3 and Xbox 360 in their first six months. Nintendo's Wii U software sales increased by over 80 percent year-on-year.

Microsoft said it sold 71,000 Xbox 360 consoles in April; 447,000 Xbox One games and 2.2 million Xbox 360 games. These totals gave the Xbox One a combined US retail market share of 53 percent.

NPD data shows that sales of both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 combined are double that of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 over their first six months. Overall hardware sales for all console formats rose 76 per cent year-on-year in April.

Analysts said the most encouraging news for Microsoft lies in software sales. Microsoft sold 447,000 Xbox One games in April and 2.2 million Xbox 360 titles, including Titanfall, the number one gaming title.

Xbox One was developed and marketed by Microsoft. Announced May 21, 2013, it is the successor to the Xbox 360 and the third console in the Xbox family.

Xbox One directly competes with PlayStation 4 and Nintendo's Wii U. All three belong to the eighth generation of video game consoles.

The PS4's graphics processing unit or GPU can perform 1.843 teraflops, making it the world's most powerful video game console.