Wii Sales Through the Roof

Nintendo's system outsells Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PSP combined. 

Sales of Nintendo's little white console were off the charts in October, according to new data released by the NPD Group. Wii sold 803,000 units for the month, singlehandedly outselling Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PSP combined. Microsoft's console sold through 371,000 units; PS3 190,000 and PSP 193,000. PS2, meanwhile, picked up another 136,000 players. 

"The greater supply of Wii hardware at retail is evident in the sales figures for the month with the Wii enjoying its best sales month outside of last November and December," said analyst Anita Frazier. 

The games industry as a whole grew 18 percent year-over-year in October and is still poised to top $22 billion in annual sales through the end of the year, ignoring all signs of a recession. 

The top-selling Wii game in October was, again, Wii Fit, with 487,000 units sold. Mario Kart Wii sold 290,000 copies and Wii Play picked up another 282,000 converts. The top-seller for the month, however, was Fable II, with a massive 790,000 copies sold during the month. 

The top three best-selling Wii games demonstrate the unprecedentedly long shelf life that some software enjoys on Nintendo's system. Not only has Wii Play, packed with a remote, sold upward of 7.2 million copies in America, but a quick glance at Wii Fit's sales progress would show an increase in momentum as the months have passed, virtually unheard of. 

"There is no way for us to know for sure how long consumers will respond at this current level to Wii Fit," said NOA's VP of corporate affairs, Denise Kaigler. "We are certainly very pleased to see more and more consumers continuing to 'discover' Wii Fit and hearing stories about how they then talk to their friends and family about it. There is no doubt that word of mouth is helping to fuel the continued popularity of the game." 

Wii Fit has sold more than 2.8 million copies since its release in May and remains one of the few games whose sales numbers have actually increased in some months since its release. If this momentum keeps up, some analysts have projected that the $89 title could ultimately outsell games like Grand Theft Auto 4 by the end of 2009 on its way to becoming one of the best-selling so-called games this generation. 

Continued high sales of games like Wii Fit, Wii Play and Mario Kart Wii, all of which incidentally ship with some kind of attachment or peripheral, illustrate a very different business model for Nintendo, one more in common with a manufacturer of a DVD-player than a videogame machine. Whereas new videogames fall out of fashion within weeks, the back-catalog for Hollywood movies is forever flourishing -- a truth that has left more than a few videogame publishers envious. With its mass-consumerism approach, Nintendo seems to be enjoying the fruits traditionally reserved for Hollywood studios.