Nintendo announced that it has sold more than 600,000 units of its new Wii next-generation video game console singe its Nov. 19 launch. With the busy holiday shopping season just beginning, the company has already earned more than a $190 million in the Americas from sales of consoles, accessories and first-party software.
Being on the ‘nice’ list won’t be enough to get you one of this year’s must-have items. Nintendo says demand for the Wii continues to exceed supply, though they’ve several times the amount of PlayStation 3 consoles released by Sony the same week. Whereas PlayStation 3 units retail for between $500 and $600, depending on the amount of native memory, The Wii sells for $250, which should give Nintendo a major lead in the next-gen console battle.
One of the goals Nintendo had in developing the Wii was expanding its appeal beyond the hard-core gamer demographic. Every Wii system shipped includes the Wii Sports software, which offers five-games that take advantage of the wireless remote controller to make gameplay more intuitive and accessible to gaming newcomers.
According to Nintendo, avid gamers have bought more than 454,000 copies of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which puts a novel twist on the classic franchise by letting players swing the controller to deliver sword blows. The Wii also boasts a ‘Virtual Console’ feature offers downloadable access to a catalog of Nintendo, Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx16 games released over the past 20 years. Moe information on the Wii can be found at www.nintendo.com.
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