Author Topic: Wii Sells 600,000 Units So Far (Read 9807 times)

Svevan · « **on:** November 27, 2006, 10:41:10 AM »

Number accounts for units sold in "the Americas," Nintendo mum on formerly promised number of one million. Also, Zelda sells a lot.

WII IS A MASSIVE HIT

600,000 First-Week Purchases Attracting Veteran and New Gamers

REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 27, 2006 - Built on a foundation of pure fun, Nintendo's new Wii™ video game system sold through to more than 600,000 consumers in the Americas in just its first eight days of availability. That's a rate of nearly one per second continuously since the Nov. 19 launch. Including just first-party software and accessory sales, Wii instantly has become a $190 million business in the Americas. During the Thanksgiving holiday shopping weekend, there was plenty of conversation across the nation about the high demand for the Wii system, with the acknowledgment that if you see one, you'd better buy it.

"Even with sales already in excess of 600,000 units, demand continues to exceed supply, as it's clear this is one of the ‘gotta-have' products for the holiday season," says Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. "We've shipped retailers several times the amount of hardware the other company was able to deliver for its launch around the same time - and we still sold out. Given the inclusive nature of Wii game play, we're seeing this new form of video gaming is already a huge hit with gamers and newcomers alike. It continues to be a phenomenal launch."

The system also is succeeding in its stated mission of reinvigorating current players, while attracting new ones. Every Wii system includes the five-game Wii Sports™ software, which is the talk of the Internet, featuring countless reports on how previously devout non-gamers have suddenly been converted via the amazing new way games are experienced using the system's remarkable controller. At the same time, the masterful The Legend of Zelda®: Twilight Princess, a favorite of avid gamers, already has achieved sales of more than 454,000 units in the Americas, representing more than 75 percent of all hardware purchasers.

Licensees, pleased not only with the sales performance of the Wii, but also its creative development capabilities, are publicly sharing their comments:

"Madden NFL 07 is a great example of how the Wii gives players a whole new experience on their favorite games," says EA Studio President Paul Lee. "EA's creative teams are working to build more Wii features into some of our most popular franchises."

"The creativity we've been able to unleash on the Wii system with our game Red Steel has been eye-opening for our development teams," explains Ubisoft President Laurent Detoc. "Having the opportunity to design and develop entirely new game-play experiences using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk is both exciting and rewarding."

Classic games also are proving to be a hit on Wii, which offers downloadable access to 20 years of the best of Nintendo®, Sega Genesis® and TurboGrafx16™ hits via the system's Virtual Console™ feature.

Pryopizm · « **Reply #1 on:** November 27, 2006, 11:25:07 AM »

What happened to rolling out one million at launch? No wonder every store in my area got so few.

decoyman · « **Reply #2 on:** November 27, 2006, 11:28:19 AM »

I wonder if it had anything to do with them realizing that there were issues with some launch units, so they pulled back ones with the problem that they found... ?

Pryopizm · « **Reply #3 on:** November 27, 2006, 11:29:42 AM »

Would be nice if they'd come clean with it, if that--or anything like it--was the case.

GoldenPhoenix · « **Reply #4 on:** November 27, 2006, 12:43:30 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: Pryopizm
What happened to rolling out one million at launch? No wonder every store in my area got so few.

Um I believe that 1 million was an estimate, nothing official, so Nintendo really has nothing to answer too. Regardless I don't have much sympathy for people who didn't wait a couple hours before launch, it isn't like 600k is something to sneeze at and you didn't have to camp out for over 24 hrs to get one.

BiLdItUp1 · « **Reply #5 on:** November 27, 2006, 12:53:55 PM »

times square ftw
...seriously though, this is a console launch. MR. T SAYS USE YO HEAD, FOO

nickmitch · « **Reply #6 on:** November 27, 2006, 12:54:47 PM »

Oh, you edited you post. Nevermind.

GoldenPhoenix · « **Reply #7 on:** November 27, 2006, 12:56:11 PM »

Beat you to it TV Man, I corrected it

.

Svevan · « **Reply #8 on:** November 27, 2006, 01:32:57 PM »

Who cares if one million was an estimate? (it wasn't, it was a goal) The point is that they wanted it, made it clear they were going to do it, and then didn't. Note the news story: they wanted one million for North America. Now they're saying the system sold 600,000 in "THE Americas." That's a serious misstep. What went wrong, Nintendo?

Of course nothing's doom and gloom yet - the system is selling, which is great, and they're outdoing PS3 of course. But four million by year's end is looking less likely (actually it's not going to happen at all).

Ceric · « **Reply #9 on:** November 27, 2006, 01:36:22 PM »

Me and 14 people who waited with me would disagree about not having to wait more then 24 hrs.

Pryopizm · « **Reply #10 on:** November 27, 2006, 01:43:39 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: VGrevolution
Quote
Originally posted by: Pryopizm
What happened to rolling out one million at launch? No wonder every store in my area got so few.

Um I believe that 1 million was an estimate, nothing official, so Nintendo really has nothing to answer too. Regardless I don't have much sympathy for people who didn't wait a couple hours before launch, it isn't like 600k is something to sneeze at and you didn't have to camp out for over 24 hrs to get one.

Then have sympathy for the fact that I don't own one because I can't currently afford one thanks to my cable company.

zakkiel · « **Reply #11 on:** November 27, 2006, 02:27:26 PM »

VG, if you only had to wait a couple of hours for yours, then you got lucky, plain and simple. So get off that high horse.

Based on what I remember from my town, if Nintendo had in fact shipped one million, it would just about have filled all the early morning lines. Everyone who got in later would still have missed out, but I'd say it would have more or less satisfied demand. Oh well.

Also: 75% bought TP? Who the hell are the other 25%? Besides Ian?

Djunknown · « **Reply #12 on:** November 27, 2006, 02:45:21 PM »

Looks like Nintendo isn't immune to overestimating its capacity. As George Harrison stated in NWR's podcast, they can't get them out of China fast enough. Couple with the fact that Japanese and European launches aren't far behind, they have to make some allocations.

Looks like ebayers will be in business for a little while longer...

BranDonk Kong · « **Reply #13 on:** November 27, 2006, 03:21:33 PM »

These figures don't account for any sales made today...if there were any shipments delivered this morning. The 8 days are Sunday 11/19-Sunday 11/26.

kings x · « **Reply #14 on:** November 27, 2006, 04:17:36 PM »

That's a bit misleading. I bet many of those Zelda sales are people buying them that don't have Wii yet. After all, we've ben hyped to no end to 'buy when you can', so I have stuff already ordered, including zelda, cables, SD, and controllers, but no Wii anywhere around here.

TJ Spyke · « **Reply #15 on:** November 27, 2006, 04:18:07 PM »

This is gonna be a monster in Japan, I expect it to be like the DS Lite launch, where people lined up for hours before it launched and was buying them so quickly that Nintendo was easily selling over 100K every week (and the only think stopping the numbers from being even higher was Nintendo not being able to manufacture them fast enough).

Artimus · « **Reply #16 on:** November 27, 2006, 05:00:12 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: Svevan
Who cares if one million was an estimate? (it wasn't, it was a goal) The point is that they wanted it, made it clear they were going to do it, and then didn't. Note the news story: they wanted one million for North America. Now they're saying the system sold 600,000 in "THE Americas." That's a serious misstep. What went wrong, Nintendo?

Of course nothing's doom and gloom yet - the system is selling, which is great, and they're outdoing PS3 of course. But four million by year's end is looking less likely (actually it's not going to happen at all).

Yeah, they WANTED a million but only managed 600,000 (or so). That's such a tragedy. Boo hoo hoo. Seriously. You know they produced as many as possible, it's not a matter of just snapping your fingers. If they got 600,000 then that's all that could have been produced by launch. You can't blame that one anyone, it's just how the business works. It's a large enough number not to make the launch questionable like Sony's, so what's the big deal? They're not holding out on us. They didn't lie.

Hocotate · « **Reply #17 on:** November 27, 2006, 05:13:55 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: nintendogamecube86
This is gonna be a monster in Japan, I expect it to be like the DS Lite launch, where people lined up for hours before it launched and was buying them so quickly that Nintendo was easily selling over 100K every week (and the only think stopping the numbers from being even higher was Nintendo not being able to manufacture them fast enough).

I agree, this will dominate Japan. It is already outdoing the PS3 in North America by default. Even if X360 takes the US, Wii's power in Japan will pretty much force all the big name JP devs to support it. This in turn, will eventually make Wii the top console in the USA as well (just like DS).

Quote
Also: 75% bought TP? Who the hell are the other 25%? Besides Ian?

*raises hand* I thought I'd give the other launch games a chance, I know if I bought Zelda nothing else would be played lol. I'll probably buy it in a few weeks here.

King of Twitch · « **Reply #18 on:** November 27, 2006, 05:16:18 PM »

wasn't there some sort of meteor shower on launch night? I tried finding the post but it seems to have disappeared. obviously sony could not allow such a massive head start and acted accordingly

TrueNerd · « **Reply #19 on:** November 27, 2006, 05:34:31 PM »

Zelda should have outsold the Wii. Everyone buying the Wii should have got Zelda and all those planning on getting Wii should have gotten the game as well. I mean, why else get it right now?

Dark_Sloth · « **Reply #20 on:** November 27, 2006, 06:22:47 PM »

Oh yeah there was meteor shower for the Gamecube launch. I didn't see anything, but it was nice to know it was going on.
Pretty crazy about the launch numbers. I wonder if many retailers have gotten more shipments of wii's. I could see it going far with a whole month of sales if they could supply enough.

Klapaucius · « **Reply #21 on:** November 27, 2006, 06:38:12 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: zakkiel
VG, if you only had to wait a couple of hours for yours, then you got lucky, plain and simple. So get off that high horse.

Based on what I remember from my town, if Nintendo had in fact shipped one million, it would just about have filled all the early morning lines. Everyone who got in later would still have missed out, but I'd say it would have more or less satisfied demand. Oh well.

Also: 75% bought TP? Who the hell are the other 25%? Besides Ian?

I'm thinking the the other 25% are first time gamers who've never played Zelda before, or more likely are people waiting for the Gamecube release.

Arbok · « **Reply #22 on:** November 27, 2006, 08:05:46 PM »

Well, just to lay in my two cents. I got up and waited out in front of my Bestbuy at 5 in the morning, a full five hours before it opened, and was 39th in line. They had a total of 70 at launch. So yes it was a long time to wait, but I don't think it was horrible or anything (helped that I basically played one single map of Advance Wars the whole time). If you were trying to get one in the city I could imagine it was much harder though. They said they would have a total of 120 coming to them by the end of the month (including the 70 at launch) so perhaps that million was forth coming, who knows. You think they would have tried to get them all out by Black Friday, but then they would have sold out anyway regardless of the time frame.

Quote
Originally posted by: Klapaucius
I'm thinking the the other 25% are first time gamers who've never played Zelda before, or more likely are people waiting for the Gamecube release.

More of the former I would wager. There were a number of people in my line who were getting it for Wii Sports and Red Steel only (while in the opposite camp where the people who read early reviews and stayed clear of the latter).

Ceric · « **Reply #23 on:** November 28, 2006, 02:18:06 AM »

If memory serves where I got my Wii we got 20 Wiis and 19 copies of Zelda. If everywhere was the same it would account for the 25%.

BranDonk Kong · « **Reply #24 on:** November 28, 2006, 02:25:05 AM »

That's 5%.

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Author Topic: Wii Sells 600,000 Units So Far (Read 9807 times)