Nintendo claim 8 of top 10 Australian titles in 2008

Mike Bantick
Thursday, 22 January 2009 05:45

Your IT - Entertainment

Nintendo have divulged some local big N 2008 milestones.  Basically, they dominated Australia with the Wii and DS, as they did everywhere else in the world.

Warning, the following short article contains gratuitous self horn blowing and back slapping by Nintendo Australia, still I guess they do have a little phenomena happening with sales of their gaming consoles, so why not?

Nintendo announces that Nintendo DS® is the best selling console of 2008, making it the third consecutive year that Nintendo DS has achieved this status, whilst Wii™ has sold through one million* units in Australia.

Independent market research company GfK Retail and Technology Australia confirms that Nintendo DS continues to break records as it comes through for the third year in a row 2006, 2007, 2008 - as best selling console, no easy feat considering the original Nintendo DS launched in 2005. Each year, sales of Nintendo DS continue to increase, and In 2008 Nintendo DS sold through more than 800,000 units, more than 212,000 of these were sold in December 2008 alone. Nintendo DS currently has an install base of more than 1.7 million units in Australia.

Also in news from Nintendo, 111 weeks since launch, Wii has reached the milestone of one million units, making it the fastest selling console to reach this milestone. Previously, the console that held this record was
Nintendo DS, which sold through one million units in 152 weeks. In 2008,
Wii sold through more than 685,000 units, with more than 191,000 sold in December 2008 alone.

From the list of the top 10 console games for 2008, eight out of the 10 are titles played on Wii or Nintendo DS Wii Fit™ (1), Wii Play™ (2), Mario Kart™ Wii (3), Mario & Sonic At The Olympics Wii (4) Brain Training™ (7), Mario & Sonic At The Olympics Nintendo DS (8), Super Smash Bros.™ Brawl (9), and Big Beach Sports Wii (10).

For those keeping score, the mysterious 5th and 6th slots were filled by Grand Theft Auto IV, PS3 and Xbox 360 respectively.