Wii Has the Best Month in Video Game History, Nintendo DS Has the Best Calendar Year of All Time

A holiday shopping frenzy helped both of Nintendo’s video game systems make history: Nintendo’s Wii™ home system sold more than 3.8 million units in December, a new all-time single-month U.S. sales record. The Nintendo DS™ Lite and Nintendo DSi™ hand-held systems combined to sell more than 3.3 million, the second biggest month in U.S. history.

Those strong December numbers helped propel the Nintendo DS franchise to more than 11.2 million sold in 2009, a new U.S. calendar-year sales record for any video game system – ever. The Wii console finished 2009 with 9.6 million sold. Of all the Wii consoles ever sold in the United States since its November 2006 launch, nearly one-fifth (18.7 percent) were sold during November and December 2009.

“Wii, Nintendo DS Lite and Nintendo DSi combined to sell more than 7 million units in the month of December alone,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “Clearly there is overwhelming consumer demand for fun games, motion controls and value. This remarkable hardware sales surge presents a tremendous software opportunity for Nintendo and its third-party partners as we head into 2010.”

Lifetime U.S. sales for Wii have now surpassed 27.2 million units. No other home console has ever sold so many so quickly. Lifetime U.S. sales for the Nintendo DS franchise have topped 38.8 million units, surpassing lifetime sales of the Game Boy™ Advance franchise.

As always, great software drives hardware sales. In December alone, consumers placed six Nintendo games in the top 10 best-sellers of the month. These include New Super Mario Bros.™ Wii at No. 1 with more than 2.8 million sold, Wii Sports Resort™ at No. 2 with more than 1.7 million sold, Wii Fit™ Plus with the Wii Balance Board™ accessory at No. 3 with more than 1.7 million sold, Wii Play™ at No. 6 with more than 1.0 million sold, Mario Kart™ Wii at No. 7 with more than 936,000 sold and Mario & Luigi™: Bowser’s Inside Story for Nintendo DS Lite and Nintendo DSi at No. 10 with more than 656,000 sold.

For all of 2009, Nintendo finished with seven of the top 10 best-selling games of the year. These include New Super Mario Bros. Wii at No. 2 with more than 4.2 million sold, Wii Sports Resort at No. 3 with more than 4.2 million sold, Wii Fit™ at No. 4 with more than 3.5 million sold, Mario Kart Wii at No. 5 with nearly 3.1 million sold, Wii Play at No. 6 with more than 3.1 million sold, Wii Fit Plus™ at No. 8 with more than 2.4 million sold and Pokémon™ Platinum Version at No. 10 with more than 2.0 million sold.

All numbers contained in this document are according to the NPD Group, which tracks U.S. video game sales.

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