14 DAY TRIAL // Hardware maker and video game publisher Nintendo has announced that it has managed to sell more than 1.5 million units during Black Friday and that it is hopeful that its Wii home console and its DS line up of handhelds will dominate sales in the United States for the months of November and December.
The numbers reported have been moved to customers between November 21, which was a Sunday, and November 27, according to Nintendo.
The company managed to sell 900,000 Nintendo DS systems, which is slightly lower than it did during the same period in 2009 and 600,000 Wii home consoles, a little more than during previous years.
The numbers suggest that customers are becoming less interesting in the handheld family because of the impending launch of the 3DS device before the end of March 2011.
It also seems that the Nintendo Wii can still be a big draw at retail despite the overall decline the platform has seen in the last few months, when it has lost ground to both the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft.
Reggie Fils-Aime, who is the president of Nintendo of America, has stated, “U.S. shoppers bought about 9,000 Nintendo hardware systems nonstop for every hour of every day during the week of Black Friday.”
Just in time for the holiday season Nintendo has released a new limited edition version of the Wii, which comes packed with New Super Mario Bros and Wii Sports for 199 dollars, and one for the DS, pre loaded with Mario Kart and Brain Age for 179.99 dollars.
The two bundles are designed to celebrate 25 years since the original Super Mario Bros was launched on the Nintendo Entertainment System.
The company is working hard to keep the DS interesting by releasing new color versions for the device while the Nintendo Wii is widely though to get a upgrade which enables High Definition graphics at some point during 2011.