Wii Fit drives Nintendo back to head of the pack

Mike Bantick
Sunday, 16 December 2007 14:39

Your IT - Entertainment

Remember a few weeks back when the PS3 hit a sales milestone in Japan by whipping the crown holding Nintendo Wii?   Well the status quo has returned, release of the Wii Fit balance board and software has seen the sales gap widen again.

In Japan Wii Fit is dominating the software sales charts, ensuring hundreds of thousands of Japanese are currently – as I type – standing on one leg in front of their TV’s.

It may also be responsible for a resurgence of Wii sales in the important market – proving that it is not just price that drives the video game consumer. 

When Sony cut the PlayStation 3 price, introducing the 40GB model, the turn around was remarkable.  Rocketing up 220% for the week ending Nov 11th the PS3 outsold the Wii 56K units to 34.5K. 

The Wii fad was at an end.

But no it wasn’t, or simply a new fad took its place, with the release of the Wii Fit balance board.  With the concept of getting fit via a video game starting to sink in, the Wii is back on top.

Obviously, even while standing on one leg, hands in the air, the Wii is able to still dominate the Japanese market, notching up 115K for the week ending December 9.  Whilst the PS3 is still doing ok at 38K and the Xbox 360 picking up 33% sales from the previous week notching up almost 9K in units shipped.

The full list as supplied by media create is listed below.

- DS Lite: 168,255  (35.05%)
- Wii: 115,057  (53.89%)
- PSP: 91,481  (22.59%)
- PS3: 38,123  (2.78%)
- PS2: 11,987  (-12.52%)
- Xbox 360: 8,876  (33.84%)