Spin Cycle: Nintendo Is Happy

Nintendo is certainly the big winner of the figures for hardware sales that the NPD Group posted for the United States market in November 2009. Even if the revenue derived from the market was reduced by 13.4% over the same period in 2008, the Japanese manufacturer managed to get good results, with the Nintendo DS handheld selling 1.7 million units, on a positive trend, while the Nintendo Wii home console moved 1.25 million units, up significantly over earlier in the year following a price cut.

Cammie Dunaway, who is the executive vice president of Sales & Marketing at Nintendo of America, commented on the results by saying that “Nintendo products top Amazon.com's Most Wished For and Most Gifted lists for video games, and Wii remains at or near the top of the most-searched for video game terms on Yahoo!. As families and friends gather for the holidays, Nintendo games offer the best shared experiences.”

There are now 23 million units of the Wii in the United States and this is a huge install base that developers of games for the platform can target with their products.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which launched exactly in the middle of the month, managed to sell 1.4 million units in November, coming in at number three in the charts and showing signs to be the king of the long tail title Nintendo might see charting well even in 2010.

There are three other Nintendo titles in the top ten: Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit Plus and Mario Kart Wii, and the company expects them to perform even better in December as customers turn to family-oriented titles to give away for Christmas. The developer and publisher is also pointing out that it has six titles in the top ten best selling games of 2009, if figures registered until November are taken into account.