Pachter predicts: PlayStation 3 outsold Xbox 360 in April

Sony kicked off the year with a bang, outselling the Xbox 360 for two months in a row. While this record was broken in March, industry analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan believes that the PS3 will regain the limelight for April.

His prediction preempts the arrival of the industry numbers from the NPD Group for April, which will be released soon, revealing both software and hardware sales numbers for the month.

While he believes the Playstation 3 will beat the Xbox 360 in terms of sales, he also believes that the Wii will still reap the cream of the crop. Here are his hardware sales predictions for the month of April, followed by predictions from simExchange in parentheses:

• Wii: 600,000 (734,000)
• PS3: 290,000 (363,000)
• Xbox 360: 275,000 (381,000)
• PS2: 160,000 (n/a)
• DS: 550,000 (609,000)
• PSP: 235,000 (282,000)

Pachter goes on to say that software sales will go up by 113 for April, with sales driven by Grand Theft Auto IV (no surprise there).