35 Million DSes Sold, 6 Million Wiis By End of March

Wowzer writes "Nintendo just announced its quarterly sales for the end of 2006. Sales for the 9 months were up 72%, while net income was up 43%. From the article: '[There will be] worldwide shipments of 6 million Wii systems by the end of March 2007. Nintendo has sold 35 million DS and DS Lite to date ... As for the next fiscal year, Nintendo expect to sell around 23 million DS Lites, bringing the estimated total of DS units to 58 million by March 31, 2008.' New Super Mario Bros. seems to have legs of its own with 8.64 million copies sold worldwide and continued strong sales. But they seem slow to ship out those Wii with 4 million manufactured last year and 810,000 of those not arriving to stores until now."

Re:Faulty NPD Numbers

[Itchyeyes]

3.19 million is the number of Wiis shipped by the manufacturer worldwide. 1.1 million is the number of Wiis sold by retailers in the US. The significant difference here is the US vs worldwide numbers.

Re:I still can't get a Wii !

[CokeBear]

You need to make a conscious decision not to play that way, and stay fully involved in the action. (Wii makes it much easier just by being fun to play.)

Also, by the time I get to that point, I'm hoping there are some new sporty games out. (Any suggestions?)

Re:I still can't get a Wii !

[iamdug]

I got mine on Sunday morning. Target got 30 in and started selling at 8am. By the time I got there at 8:50 they had 4. Best part is, my wife has clocked more time than me. I'm playing twilight princess and shes playing Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Brothers. I think Nintendo might have nailed it this time, especially with the new video of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon using the Wii Remote. http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/previewArt.cfm? artid=12773 [nintendoworldreport.com]

Re:Faulty NPD Numbers

[AKAImBatman]

Ah hah! Found the exact Nintendo number in their PDF [nintendo.co.jp]:

Apr-Dec '06 (Sales Units in Ten Thousands)
Japan 114
Americas 125
Other 80
------------
Total 319

Actually, NPD didn't give the numbers for our 51st state* to the North, did they? So I suppose that would explain the discrepency between their numbers and Nintendo's. Nintendo tracks by North America as a whole while NPD only gave the US.

P.S. Can we fix the ecode tag so that it's no longer broken? It's annoying to no longer be able to lay out tabular data correctly.

Re:Bazillions sold

[Itchyeyes]

No, seriously, most PS3 were bought for reselling, while most wii's are bought for playing. And it, for me, it's a pretty big difference.

And I'm sure you have some sort of data or source to back up this claim. A cursory search on eBay or a news story about the launch line at a particular Best Buy doesn't really qualify. I'm only calling you out, because I hear this line repeated fairly often with pretty much no evidence to support such an assertion. It seems fairly intuitive that more PS3s are sold on eBay than Wiis, but that doesn't necessarily translate to most.

Re:I still can't get a Wii !

[AKAImBatman]

"yeah, jump around, get fit!" but its not long before you work out how to play Sports with mere flicks of the wrist, while sprawling back on the sofa in traditional pose.

At least in the case of Wii Sports, that doesn't work as well as it sounds. You *can* do it, but the movements are a lot less natural. Getting up and moving around makes the games a lot easier to play, which helps keep you on your feet.

The other thing that Wii Sports does is that it ramps up the challenge as you play. (Make sure you make yourself a Mii, or you won't have a save file!) So while you may start playing Wii Sports Tennis using leisurely swings, it won't be long before you find yourself concentrating hard on making more powerful swings in the direction you need the ball to go.

Last but not least, play some boxing. I know the "exhaustion" of your character takes some getting used to. Especially when he fails to punch for seemingly unknown reasons. But once you play it enough, it starts to make sense. You need to dodge the blows of your opponent, then knock him from the inside when his glove whooshes by your head. A nice strong punch followed by various jabs usually has him down on the ground in no time flat. Since there is no better cardiovascular workout than Boxing among the Wii Sports games, I highly recommend that you get acquainted with the gameplay. It will leave you breathing heavy and drenched in sweat. But you won't care because it feels just so darn good to get the exercise! ;D

Re:The trick to it is - Amazon.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon had wiimotes two days ago. I ordered one and already got it yesterday at my house. Paid for standard shipping too.

Get wireless Gamecube controllers instead

[WidescreenFreak]

I'd strongly recommend getting the wireless Gamecube controllers instead of the Classic controllers. At least wireless Gamecube controllers can be used with Gamecube games and they work with all of the VC games. If you buy the Classic controller, okay, it connects to the bottom of the Wiimote, so that makes it wireless, but if you want to play any GC games you'll need to buy GC controllers anyway.

I play all of my VC games with wireless GC controllers after returning the unopened Classic controllers that I bought. Haven't regretted it for a second. And now that rechargeable batteries are dropping in price, there is no reason to get the Classic controller unless you simply want it for the sake of having it ... that whole Wii "continuity" thing, I suppose.

And I've not seen a place out of stock of wireless GC controllers while the CC area remains out of stock.

Re:Bazillions sold

[Garse Janacek]

I'm not sure I agree with the GP -- however, as partial support for his claim, I believe that at least in Japan, the tie ratio (number of games sold / number of consoles sold) for the PS3 is less than one, which is pretty damning. I don't think that's true in the US, but I believe the ratio is still much worse than the Wii...

I share your skepticism that this means most are being bought to resell, but I think it does at least suggest a statistically significant chunk of them.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I still can't get a Wii !

[Thansal]

Heh, you should check out the minigames included in Wii Sports if you havn't yet. One of the best ones is for bowling, Your goal is to knock down as many pins as you can with one ball, however after each time they will reset the pins and add a line to the back row. Eventualy you end up with a MASSIVE amount of pins to try and get a strike on!

And I am also in the crowd of those that still don't have one yet (I am not willing to spend time over nite, buy a bundle that includes games I don't want, and I flat refuse to buy from ebay). However I have been playign it alot at friends and at the nintendo world store (before launch). Another awsome fighting game to check out is actualy the DBZ game, it also uses the motion sensetive controlls to pull off special moves.

I also played throguh the first few levels of Redsteel at a friend's house recently and have descided that it is deffinatly worth picking up. The controlls are a bit bad, but not nearly to the poitn that most of the reviewers said so (rarely does the view spin out, and I only did it when NOT in combat, simply because I looked away from the screen compleatly).

Curently my list of games to pick up looks like:
Zelda
Redsteel
Elebits (this is a questionable one)
Exite Truck
possibly maden, I really have to try it out first, and the same goes for DBZ (I want to paly it a bit more before hand).

Re:great - the store will never load now

[yermej]

I haven't been having any problems with updates or the store (just got my Wii this past Sunday - did the initial system update, downloaded the internet channel, and bought a couple VC games). If you haven't, try changing your wireless channel to 1 or 11 if possible (in the US, anyway). This is supposed to help slow/timing out connections, but I haven't needed to try it myself.

Avoid the link if your IT department checks logs!

[Valdrax]

This link redirected me to a server named pr0n.encyclopediadramatica.com instead of www.encyclopediadramatica.com. I just hope my job doesn't automatically red-flag employee URLs browsed through the mandatory proxy, or I may soon be out of a job.

So, thanks. Thanks for sharing that.