Joystiq

Cruising around eBay the other day for a deal on every single NES game, we stumbled across eBay Pop, a great little feature that lets you easily monitor the popularity and average selling price of various game consoles (and other products) on the world's most popular internet auction marketplace.

Looking at the results for the past two weeks (above) we can see the Wii is the undisputed auction leader, selling over twice as many units as the PS3. That doesn't mean the Wii's dominance will last, though -- the number of PS3 auctions has shot up nearly 50 percent over the past two weeks, outpacing the Wii's increase by a good 20 percent.

The Wii is also in the lead for price inflation, with auctions finishing at an average of 151 percent of the retail price. PS3 auctions average around 127 percent of retail (though this might be slightly higher when accounting for lower priced 20GB units) and, surprisingly, Xbox 360 premium auctions are selling at an average slightly less than the system's $399 retail price. Also surprisingly, more people seem to want the original NES than the 360 core system. Guess people really want that hard drive.

While these stats aren't indicative of the entirety of internet auctions, or even directly relatable to actual in-store sales of the systems, the regularly updated numbers provide some good data for those of us who thrive on the horse race aspects of the console transition.