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3DS has sold 19 million units to date worldwide
Along with its earnings release, Nintendo issued updated life-to-date sales totals for its currently released hardware. The 3DS reached 19 million units worldwide as of June 30 – coming up on the GameCube's lifetime 21.74 million quickly, and beating Nintendo's earlier 18.5 million projection. Its predecessor, the DS, continues to widen its lead over every other platform ever, at 152.05 million. And the Wii creeps toward 100 million, with a worldwide total of 96.56 million units.As for quarterly sales, Nintendo typically issues a list of games that sold at least one million copies in the period. This list usually includes a lot of "evergreen" games, like Wii Fit, New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart Wii. Surprisingly, for the quarter that ended June 2012, only one game made the list: Pokemon Black Version 2/White Version 2, which sold 2.45 million copies, including 30,000 outside of Japan – despite not being released outside of Japan.
Nintendo: DS is now best-selling console ever in US
Nintendo has tabulated its internal US sales figures for 2010, finding that more than seven million Wiis were sold here for the third year in a row. According to Nintendo, that means the Wii has now sold 34 million units life-to-date in the US. Yo Wii, I'm really happy for you, and I'm a let you finish, but the DS is the US's best-selling video game console of all time. Of all time. Nintendo reports that the life-to-date US sales for the DS family of systems now stands at over 47 million. The closest competitor is the PlayStation 2, which had sold 50 million in all of North America as of early 2009. The DS became Europe's best-selling console ever last year.
Wall Street Journal confirms Beatles on iTunes
Ethan Smith of the Wall Street Journal writes that iTunes will soon be carrying the Beatles catalog, according to "people familiar with the situation." According to Smith, this deal was finalized recently -- as late as last week -- between Apple and EMI group. If so, this plays into the Beatles-style hints of today's teaser announcement on the Apple home page and supports the notion that iTunes will begin selling the Beatles music as early as tomorrow. %Poll-55792% Thanks, badtzmaru
DS sells over 30 million in Japan
The same day it chose to announce the 3DS, Nintendo officially hit a ridiculous milestone for the existing DS platform(s) in Japan: 30 million units sold. Enterbrain estimates that, through March 21, the handheld has sold 30,030,434 units. The last reported worldwide total, in January, was around 125 million. Unsurprisingly, the best-selling game is New Super Mario Bros., with 5,767,262 copies sold. 30 million is indeed a record for the best-selling console ever in Japan; however, every time anyone in Japan buys a DS, it's a new record, because the DS became Japan's best-selling console as soon as it passed the PS2 at around the 21 million mark. There are people in line at electronics stores now, each of whom is about to bring the DS to a record sales total. [Via IGN]
PS3 worldwide sales cross 30 million
Adding up Sony's quarterly sales numbers for the PS3, including the 6.5 million Q3 sales it announced yesterday, Shacknews arrived at a new estimate for the console's life-to-date sales total: 33.71 million units. That's just about half of the Wii's most recent total of 67.45 million, and about 86% of the Xbox 360's recently-announced 39 million. The gap is narrowing! The year-over-year sales of the PS3 are increasing (or, at least, they increased), with 13 million sold worldwide in fiscal 2009 versus 10.1 million in fiscal 2008. That's only going to increase in 2010, as everyone is forced to buy a second PS3 so the console will appear in stereoscopic 3D even while no 3D games are being played.
DS sells 125 million worldwide, Wii up to 67 million
Nintendo announced its earnings for the nine-month period from April to December 2009, reporting a 23.8% year-over-year drop in net sales from the same period in 2008 but still claiming "the third best corresponding performances in company history." That's the extremely mild downside of the kind of crazy success Nintendo's been experiencing: even slightly less crazy success sounds bad. The company also announced new sales totals for its hardware. The DS sold an additional 23.35 million units worldwide in April-December 2009, for a worldwide life to date total of 125.13 million. Wii is now up to 67.45 million worldwide, having sold 17.05 million units. Both of those totals are, again, down from Nintendo's 2008 sales, while also being ridiculous. You can see the full chart of Wii and DS sales, as well as software sales, all broken down by region after the break.
Life-to-date sales of the biggest Nintendo games
We know that Nintendo is doing very well financially as of the end of fiscal 2008. And, of course, we know that hardware sales play a major role in that windfall. But how is Nintendo doing in terms of software sales? Very well, thank you! The company released a list of every million-selling first-party title on the Wii and DS as a supplement (PDF link) to its financial report, with no real surprises other than, perhaps, the monolithic bigness of some of the numbers. The best-selling Wii title, of course, is Wii Sports, which sold 45.7 million copies across North American and European bundle sales and standalone Japanese sales.The best-selling DS game: Nintendogs, at 22.3 million copies! We're just happy to see the wonderful Rhythm Heaven on the list, though there is something odd about it: according to the data, Rhythm Heaven sold 140,000 copies outside of Japan -- but the game didn't even come out in the West until April 5, after the end of the fiscal year.The full list is after the break. Spoiler alert: if you are the type of person who gets angry about Nintendo's success in the expanded market, this will anger you.[Via Kotaku]
AMD ships 50 millionth 'Hollywood' graphics processing chip for Wii
A recent AMD press release brought word of yet another hardware milestone for Nintendo -- earlier today, AMD shipped its 50 millionth "Hollywood" chip, the graphics processor for the Wii. With such a large number of units sold, the "Hollywood" has become AMD's most successful (and likely most profitable) gaming console chip in the company's history.It's safe to assume by AMD's missive that Nintendo has manufactured around 50 million Wiis -- though their most recent LTD numbers place the console's sales around 45 million. Since Wiis stay on store shelves an average of fourteen seconds, this can mean only one thing: Someone, or something, has stolen five million Wiis. As usual, we blame the Nazis.
Blu-ray surpasses HD DVD in disc sales for the first time
The Blu-ray and HD DVD battle has entered a new era, as preliminary Nielsen VideoScan stats show the BDA's baby sold more -- a ratio of 100 Blu-ray to every 98.71 HD DVD discs, sorry still no hard numbers here -- since their inception last year. As we all know, HD DVD was first to market and had enjoyed a lead on Blu-ray ever since, but then things started to turn with the launch of the PlayStation 3. The studios supporting Blu-ray finally began releasing significant numbers of titles and haven't looked back. Each team put its own spin on the numbers, with HD DVD-backing Universal pointing out that despite a 5:1 advantage in hardware due to the PS3, disc sales are still nearly even, while Blu-ray supporter 20th Century Fox sees the format war as being in its "final phase," and fence-straddling Warner merely noting that both formats are "selling well". Still, with the exception of the LG combo playing BH100, none of the major players have shown any plans to change sides, so until they do, prepare for a prolonged stalemate before this war is truly over.[Thanks, Jason]
