The Nintendo Wii continued its dominance of next-generation console sales in the first week of the US holiday shopping season.

Nintendo says it sold 350,000 of the $250 Wiis in the Thanksgiving week beginning November 18 – its biggest seven-day sales figure since that of the week it launched a year ago.

Microsoft has just reported sales of 310,000 Xbox 360s over the same period. It claimed it outsold Sony’s PlayStation 3 by two to one, citing estimates from top retailers.

Sony must have hoped for better after introducing a cut-price 40-gigabyte version of the console at $399.

It avoided issuing sales figures, but said PS3 sales in the week were up 245 per cent on the same period a year ago, when Sony suffered supply problems and a slow start to its launch.

Sony is currently running new PS3 commercials in its largest marketing effort for the console to date.

What they obviously don’t say is that the Wii is cheaper, the Xbox has a better games line-up and consumers aren’t clear about the benefits of a cheap Blu-ray player being in the PS3, when the standards war with HD-DVD has yet to be resolved.

November 30th, 2007 in Games | Permalink