Nintendo’s Wii, clear leader in the next-generation console race, has just passed another major milestone.
Satoru Iwata, Nintendo president, told the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today that global shipments had now passed 50m, making it the fastest selling hardware in video game history.
Microsoft trails badly in second, despite having a year’s head start over the Wii, with around 30m in sales of its Xbox 360, while Sony’s PlayStation 3 has sold around 21m.
The Wii is not the only piece of Nintendo hardware with impressive stats. Its balance board accessory has sold 14m units and its third iteration of its DS handheld, the DSi, has sold more than 2m units in Japan since its launch in November.
Mr Iwata said Amazon had reported record pre-orders of the DSi in the US ahead of its launch here on April 5.
There was also an announcement at the Nintendo president’s keynote of an upgrade to the Wii’s interface. System Menu 4.0, available today, allows a sub-menu of screens showing SD memory card content.
Nintendo has always been accused of not doing enough for outside developers. Mr Iwata countered it had helped indirectly by creating a huge installed base of users, by not releasing many games itself and by introducing peripherals like the balance board.
He said 90 per cent of the games in the WiiWare store available for download on the Wii came from non-Nintendo publishers. The interface improvements mean users now have more room to store their games – they can see up to 240 on-screen and a two-gigabyte limitation on SD cards has been lifted, so newer ones with say 32Gb in storage can be plugged into the Wii.
There was also a brief demonstration of the DSi’s capabilities – showing a game that made great use of the cameras that distinguish the new version from its predecessors. Audio is also improved on the handheld console, which has sold more than 100m units in its different versions. The DSiWare shop will also debut although there are no DSi-specific games planned for the US launch date.
