Just after posting up an announcement about how Microsoft expanded their market share, Nintendo issued out a release with data saying that they have the “best Holiday Selling Season in U.S. Video Game History” for 2006. They have a long list of achievements including how gamers picked up an average of three games with a Wii, Twilight Princess selling 1.5 million copies for the Gamecube and Wii, and 1.6 million DSes sold in December alone. The big achievement is that Nintendo shipped and sold a million Wiis in 44 days. It’s clear that Nintendo has a lot going for them even if Microsoft sold more 360s during the holiday season. The DS is hot and the Wii has a strong fanbase. See a list of Nintendo’s achievements past the break.
Consumers purchased every Wii console available at retail — more than a million in just the 44 days between U.S. launch and year end.
With sales of another 1.6 million systems in December alone, Nintendo DS achieved full year sell-through of 5.3 million.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was purchased by an extraordinary 86 percent of Wii buyers, or more than 900,000 games for that system alone. Coupled with the companion version released in December for Nintendo GameCube(TM), the two versions of the newest Zelda title totaled approximately 1.5 million unit sales in less than seven weeks, which would represent one of the five best-selling games for the entire year.
Wii owners also purchased an average of three additional games from a wide library of choices, in addition to the Wii Sports title packed in with every hardware system.
Two Nintendo DS titles, New Super Mario Bros.(R) and Brain Age(TM): Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, also were top-10 sellers for the year.
Throughout the November/December holiday shopping period, Nintendo accounted for more than half of all video game hardware systems sold in America.
