According to Satoru Iwata, Nintendo sold around 800,000 Wii systems in the United States during the week of Thanksgiving.
In a recent interview with Reuters, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata revealed that Americans had purchased about 800,000 Wii systems in just the last week of November. During that same time frame in 2007, Nintendo sold 350,000 Wii systems. Furthermore, Iwata stated that sales of the Nintendo DS had increased by close to 20 percent over the sales made during the previous Thanksgiving holiday.
Iwata seemed confident that the recession would not have a negative effect on the sales of Nintendo products. "When the economy is strong, people tend to buy three things from the top of their wish list. But when things are bad, people often buy only the first thing on their list," he commented. "Fortunately for us a lot of shoppers put our products at the top of their list."
While it seems likely that Nintendo will surpass the 981,000 Wii consoles they sold last November, it won't be confirmed until the NPD Group releases their video game sales numbers on Thursday, December 11th.