President of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, has confirmed in a speech at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, that the company’s ever popular Wii console has now officially become the fastest selling console in history.
According to Iwata, Nintendo has now shipped more than 50 million units of its Wii console, surpassing the previous title holder, Playstation 2, in achieving the milestone.
The popularity of Nintendo’s Wii and DS consoles has been extraordinary in the industry and Iwata also expressed his amazement at how successful its consoles have been.
“Frankly speaking, before the launches of the Nintendo DS and Wii systems, almost no one expected them to reach the current level of mainstream acceptance, it’s even beyond what we possibly hoped for,” he said to the conference.
One interesting fact that Iwata revealed to the conference was just how effective their launch into the casual gaming category has been.
Iwata commented “around 20 per cent of Wii households in the United States, or three million people, had no other video game system in their home when they bought the console”.
This is quite an amazing achievement and it demonstrates how Nintendo have captured a segment of the market that up until a few years ago was completely untouched.
In addition to the Wii, Iwata also confirmed that the Nintendo DS has shipped out 100 million units since its launch, another huge boost for the manufacturer.
Evidently Nintendo has performed very well in the video game category over the past few years, but it still remains to be seen how long it will retain this dominance now that it has almost saturated the market.