Slashdot Mirror
Wii Breaks Sales Records in UK
pluke writes "According to the Daily Telegraph, the Wii has sold 1,000,000 units during 38 weeks in the UK. This makes it the UK's fastest selling console ever, beating the Playstation 2 (50 weeks) and the Xbox 360 (60 weeks). Some industry analysts are also reporting that the Wii has overtaken the XBOX 360 to now become the worlds market leader across console and handheld fields. 'The sales figures are particularly impressive because the Wii was in short supply following its much-heralded launch just before last Christmas [ie, Xmas 2006], and has only recently become easily available again.'"
Volume isn't the story, its the rate at which they are moving them (volume/time) that they are talking about.
Hell, I didn't even rtfa and I picked that up.
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I didn't see any source for that quote in the linked article, so it sounds to me like the slashdot submitter might be the moron (not that I have much faith in "industry analysts"). The Wii does, however, appear to have the lead in terms of sales of 'Next-Gen' consoles, which is still significant and there aren't many people who would've imagined that to be likely a couple of years ago.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
What do you think "kiddie" means? Why do you think Mario is a "kiddie game"?
C. S. Lewis once observed that, as a ten year old, he would have been horribly embarassed had anyone found out that he read fairy tales. As an adult, he outgrew such childish things -- such as the fear of being seen to be childish. He read fairy tales openly, because he no longer worried that people would look down on him.
I've never seen anyone over about twenty-five worrying about whether games are "kiddie games". By thirty, people are enjoying Mario games because they're fun.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
The people over at Nintendo must be happy.
Relieved is probably more like it. They had one shot as surging back to prominence, and they nailed it. Now hopefully more and more game developers will realize it's worthwhile to develop on the console, and hopefully they'll develop stuff using the consoles unique control methods effectively.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Mind sharing WHERE it is readily available? I go to game/electronics stores every so often, always with the premise that "if I see a Wii console in this store, I will buy it". In almost a year, I can sadly report that I have not been able to lay eyes on a Wii box :(
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
It's no fact nor fiction. Or rather, it's a fact, but not officially approved yet.
Even the most conservative analysts and sites analysing sales have admitted that the Wii is market leader, and reached that status in August, perhaps even in July. Except joke sites like nexgenwars of course, but they always were completely wrong (they had XB360 at 10 millions sold in January !!).
Actually, the only region that causes problems is Europe, as the informations are scarce.
But we know that among the big 5 of Europe (UK + FIGS, meaning France Germany Italy Spain in that order of market share, representing 85% of Europe sales), Wii has passed the XB360 in all of them except UK, and UK will fall soon.
ALl this means is that for now, Wii is market leader, and leader in one region (Japan). Europe will fall soon (before end of 2007 by most estimates), and USA will fall last, as it's the best (the only good actually) XBox 360 market and they have 2 M+ lead there, which will grow higher with Halo 3 release and Wii shortages that are to be expected in the holidays.