Remember when Nintendo announced the Wii? Other gaming companies said it was nothing but a bunch of smoke and mirrors, those companies are looking pretty stupid these days after they were proven completely wrong. How wrong were those other gaming companies? Nintendo today announced U.S. sales alone of more than 30 million gaming consoles.
The Wii-Motion Plus control has since debuted and proven that Nintendo not only stands behind their gaming concept, but that they are working to constantly better it in big ways. Throw in the Wii Balance Board, tons of third party hardware and it shouldn’t really surprise anyone that the Wii has been doing so well for so long.
Here’s the companies official announcement:
Today Nintendo announced a huge milestone for Wii – it reached 30 million units sold in the United States alone. This is based on internal figures and no video game system has ever sold so many so quickly in the history of the industry – in fact Wii reached this milestone 15 months faster than the next best-selling console.
Since launching in 2006, the Wii console has expanded the global audience for video games, getting people of all ages and backgrounds off the couch and into the action with a wide variety of inclusive, easy-to-learn motion-control activities. For under $200, consumers not only get the Wii console and a second-generation motion controller – Wii MotionPlus – which brings additional precision to certain games, but ” right-out-of-the-box fun” with the active play titles Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort. That’s a great value to consumers!
Additionally, Wii has a strong slate of games on the way for the fall and holiday season. These include Metroid™: Other M on Aug. 31, Samurai Warriors™ 3 on Sept. 27, Kirby’s Epic Yarn™ and Wii Party™ this fall, and Donkey Kong Country™ Returns, FlingSmash™ and PokéPark™ Wii: Pikachu’s Adventure for the holidays. That’s in addition to New Carnival Games from 2K Play in September, NBA JAM from EA Sports in October, GoldenEye 007 from Activision and Just Dance 2 from Ubisoft this fall, and Disney’s Epic Mickey from Disney Interactive Studios and Sonic Colors from SEGA during the holidays.
Over 30 million units in less than 4 years. I’ll place this one under “failure” just to prove Sony and Microsoft wrong. Wait aren’t they trying to “better” motion gaming now with their own motion sensor based products? I think I’ll reverse my “failure” decision.
