If you have called the Wii or DS dead or dying lately, I am sure Nintendo would find that hilarious as they are laughing all the way to the bank with the most home consoles sold for 2010. Nintendo recently offered some statements on the success of 2010’s console sales and as usual, the famed company is still reigning supreme at #1.
Nintendo sold more than 2.5 million Nintendo DS systems and more than 2.3 million Wii systems in December alone, bringing their lifetime U.S. sales totals to more than 47 million and more than 34 million, respectively.
With the new Nintendo 3DS™ system set to launch in the United States in March, Nintendo has strong momentum heading into 2011. Nintendo 3DS lets users view 3D images without the need for special glasses. More information about the system will be made available during a Jan. 19 preview event in New York.
“Nintendo has sold more game systems than anyone else for five years running,” said Charlie Scibetta, Nintendo of America’s senior director of Corporate Communications. “Of the quarter billion hardware systems sold in the United States during the past 10 years, Nintendo sold more than half. We look forward to bringing fun new experiences to consumers when Nintendo 3DS launches in March.”
Three of the top five best-selling games of December play exclusively on Nintendo systems. These include Just Dance 2 from Ubisoft at No. 1, Donkey Kong Country Returns™ from Nintendo at No. 3 and Disney Epic Mickey from Disney Interactive Studios at No. 4. For all of 2010, 13 of the top 25 best-selling games play on Nintendo systems. This includes two of the top five; five of the top 10; and nine of the top 15.
With all of this said comes a bit of wonder of how the Wii will stand to this year’s huge market. Aside from Mario Sports Mix coming out in a month or so as well as Skyward Sword, there isn’t too much first party software hitting the Wii this year so it will be interesting to watch for more games to be announced during 2011. Nintendo are great at last minute announcements so I am hoping we see some more love towards their core audience again like the phenomenal releases of Donkey Kong Country Returns, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Kirby’s Epic Yarn as I think those three games along probably had a lot to do with sales numbers last year.
Of course the system which is top priority from Nintendo is the 3DS and with all the buzz I have a feeling the launch will certainly be successful, but I would not count out Sony or Microsoft as this will be the year where we are going to see even more of the technology wars as the Kinect and Move start to release bigger titles. That is the greatest thing about the wars among these three giants though, everyone wins as they battle to bring gamers to their side.
