November sales of Wii, the games console produced by Nintendo, more than doubled in the United States from the same period last year to a record-breaking two million units.
The figure was a record for any console in any month excluding last December, and eclipsed rival machines, according to NDP Group, the market researcher. Microsoft sold 836,000 units of its Xbox 360, up 8.6per cent on November last year. Sony's PlayStation 3 sales totalled 378,000, down nearly a fifth. The figures will silence critics who dismissed the cheap and cheerful Wii, which costs much less than PlayStation 3, as a novelty with limited appeal.
Rather, the Wii's developers, who broke new ground by building “a video games console for people who don't like video games” — women and older audiences — appear to have hit on a hardy winning formula. The console's relatively low price, in particular, looks well suited to an economic downturn, analysts say.
The sales pitch of Nintendo, the Japanese video game company, now appears to be hitting a familiar note: the company is giving warning that it cannot guarantee adequate supplies of the Wii to meet demand, a message it also gave out last year.
Reggie Fils-Aime, the head of Nintendo's operations in America, said: “It's clear that the consumer demand is exceptionally strong. With all our activity and effort, we can't commit that the product will be available up until Christmas Day. We're in uncharted territories when it comes to demand.”
Other video games companies approach the key Christmas period in less festive moods. Electronic Arts, the largest games publisher, gave warning this week that it would miss earnings targets because of weak sales. THQ, the company behind the Wall-E games based on the animated Pixar character, said it would close five of its studios, eliminating 250 jobs.
Nintendo is also leading in sales of hand-held game players. Consumers bought 1.57 million DS machines, compared with 421,000 units of Sony's PSP, NPD said. The PSP sales are down 26 per cent from last year.
According to NPD, the video games industry in America achieved $2.9 billion in sales last month, up 10 per cent from a year earlier.
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