Wii serious business during Thanksgiving week
by Chris Greenhough 
{ Dec 8th 2008 at 6:26PM }
Behold what the Wii can do when it's actually available to shoppers. During last year's Thanksgiving holiday week, the console shifted 350,000 units in the U.S., even though shortages were pretty major at the time. With more Wiis in stores this year, that number jumped to 800,000. In a single freakin' week. To put that in perspective, Nintendo sold 803,000 Wiis in the whole of October. Italics. Yikes.Satoru Iwata broke the happy news in an interview with Reuters, adding that "When the economy is strong, people tend to buy three things from the top of their wishlist. But when things are bad, people often buy only the first thing on their list. Fortunately for us a lot of shoppers put our products at the top of their list." That's a pretty sizeable "nyah!" to the competition.
[Via Joystiq]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
time @ Dec 8th 2008 6:51PM
Xbox 360 sold 800,000 during the entire month of November.
Justin @ Dec 8th 2008 7:20PM
800,000 * $6 they make off of each unit = 4.8 Million Dollars. I would call that a good week.
Mr Khan @ Dec 8th 2008 8:06PM
いわたさん は こわい です ね
leonus11 @ Dec 8th 2008 9:23PM
what the--!? lol are you typing from a sidekick? because i've seen this happen when people type from sidekicks (namely my girlfriend).
louis @ Dec 9th 2008 12:54AM
he says mr. iwata is cute. (no joke).
Synch @ Dec 8th 2008 9:26PM
＠Mr Khan:
I believe it is spelled 可愛い or かわいい. =) But...yeah.
Brew @ Dec 9th 2008 2:41AM
Mr Khan is saying Iwata-san looks scary, right? Kowai = scary,frightening or something :D
Synch @ Dec 9th 2008 9:27AM
Oh bother. I can't read. *sigh* Well, whatever. We're BOTH right. =D
TracerBullet @ Dec 9th 2008 4:54AM
Use this money well, Iwata-sam, because though times are ahead. From Bloomberg site: "Sony Corp. plans to eliminate 8,000 jobs in the largest reduction announced by a Japanese company since the credit crunch drove the world into a recession.
Sony will curb investments, outsource production and move away from unprofitable businesses as part of plans to save more than 100 billion yen ($1.1 billion) by the year ending March 2010. Sony will invest 30 percent less in its electronics business than planned under its mid-term strategy, it said, without giving figures.
The Brava-brand TV maker said it will “adjust” pricing to cope with the stronger yen, two weeks after saying it didn’t have plans for “massive cuts” in prices in the U.S."
So, Nintendo better save some of this profits to help'em keep going - and, maybe, have another edge over the competition - in 2009.
But things are getting ugly.
nintendo1889 @ Dec 9th 2008 9:07AM
Shouldn't have you said "いわたさん は かわいいです ね"
instead of "こわい です ね"? No one can deny the fact that the wii kicked the competition out of the water. If Nintendo's console "sucks" so much, why is it selling so much more? Why does it make more profit than PS3 and Xbox360?