In case it wasn’t already obvious, more figures have been released that show that the Nintendo Wii is selling quite well.

Having owned a Nintendo Wii for some time now and since I read Gamespot’s excellent review of No More Heroes I think we can honestly say that Nintendo are making a massive comeback in the home gaming console market. Sony and Microsoft should be worried; Nintendo has made a clear battle cry.

According to an article in Famitsu magazine that quotes data from Enterbrain, the Wii has now sold over five million units in Japan alone.

5 million units is quite an impressive number but ultimately the success of the Wii will obviously be down to how many third party game providers actually produce some quality titles for this unit.

The report also lists the five top-selling Nintendo Wii games in Japan. At number one is Wii Sports, which has so far sold 2,663,938 units; followed by Wii Play with 2,139,084; Mario Party 8 with 1,153,648; Wii Fit with 1,113,626; and last but not least Super Mario Galaxy with 843,961. In Japan, Wii Play comes bundled with an extra controller, as it does in the UK and America, but Wii Sports doesn’t come with the console and has to be purchased separately.

That’s a whole lot of games and those numbers should be enough to convince third party providers that coding games for the Nintendo Wii is a worthwhile pursuit. Many people have been claiming that the Nintendo Wii will sink to obscurity relatively quickly because of the lack of quality games. These people have been proven wrong and these are the same people who slated the Nintendo DS. Wrong on both counts folks; the Nintendo Wii goes from strength to strength it seems. The situation where we have a lack of games for this quality system is possibly because many people didn’t anticipate such a runaway success for this console.

Nintendo’s third-quarter financial results are due to be released tomorrow, and one analyst has stated that he thinks the company is likely to beat its “conservative” estimates of a $14.5 billion guidance, and that it will be announced that some seven million Wiis will have been sold globally.

These fantastic figures make the people who are still bashing the Nintendo Wii sound pretty stupid. It is now the worldwide leader in home console sales and this is a fact which you simply cannot argue with. Nintendo have proven that they can take the home gaming scene to a much wider audience and they have proven this in spectacular fashion. We are definitely rushing out and buying a copy of no more heroes as soon as we can and in the meantime there are a few of us still playing the Dance Dance Revolution Wii!

Source: gamespot

Nintendo of Australia has just announced that they will be the official gaming supplier of the 2008 Australian Open. Nintendo will make their presence known in Australia by holding competitions for Wii Sports and Sight Training for the whole duration of the Open outside the Vodafone Arena.

Here we see yet again the levels to which the Nintendo Wii has permeated society! We fully expect the competitions held on the Wii Sports at the Open to be just as competitive as the real thing! People are going absolutely mad for this console and we think with good reason. Nintendo sponsoring the Australian open is just another excellent avenue to expose previous non-gamers to the delights this console can offer all the family.

People who enter will have to compete against rivals for the tennis championship for the Wii. Those who become the daily champions will get to take home a Wii console and a copy of Wii Sports. The winner will get tickets to see the Men’s Finals and have a Wii Sports tennis play off against Mark Philippoussis, an Australian tennis player who became a finalist in various tennis tournaments such as the U.S. Open, Australian Open, and Wimbledon.

Nintendo’s intentions are to bring to all the opportunity to play tennis at this very popular event which will be taking place at Melbourne Park from January 14-27 this year. This little box of electronics really is taking gaming to a whole new level. The prospect of playing Philippoussis in the grand Wii final and actually having a chance of beating him is, whilst probably a pipe dream, a huge draw for tennis lovers of all ages, shapes and sizes! We predict the Nintendo Wii Sports championship at this event will be a great success.

With Nintendo’s sponsorship for the 2008 Australian Open, Rose Lappin, managing director for Nintendo Australia said, “Both the Wii Championships and Nintendo Sight Training Lounge at the Australian Open, will showcase the diversity and broad appeal of Nintendo’s products.”

We couldn’t agree more. This is a smart move on the part of Nintendo and we fully expect them to sponsor other sporting events with a similar goal of introducing this clever, new-gen console to a much wider variety of users. With a truly revolutionary games machine and a sound marketing team 2008 should easily see the Wii reaching its predicted 8 million sales. We’d hazard a guess that it’ll actually sell quite a bit more than that. If you don’t have your Wii yet why not see if there’s a wii console for sale on this site.

Source: Gamespot