Wii sales double in US

Kyoto - Nintendo Co Ltd said sales of its Wii game console more than doubled during the week of Thanksgiving in the United States, apparently defying the retail gloom of the global economic crisis.

President Satoru Iwata told Reuters in an interview that Wii sales more than doubled to about 800 000 units during the week of Thanksgiving, from about 350 000 units a year earlier.

While Iwata did not give specific dates, he said the sales were measured over a seven-day period that included both Thanksgiving and a so-called Black Friday that was traditionally bad for US retailers.

"Fortunately for us a lot of shoppers put our products at the top of their list," Iwata said on Monday.

He said sales of its DS handheld game player were up about 20 percent year-on-year during the holiday period. European Wii sales so far this holiday season have outstripped last year's, he said.

"We are shooting for quite big numbers as our annual (unit) sales targets. But we are not in a situation where it is getting difficult to hit that target or our plans are getting off track," Iwata said.

Nintendo, locked in a three-way battle with Sony Corp and Microsoft Corp in the global video game industry, aims to sell 27.5 million units of the Wii in the year to end-March, up 48 percent from a year earlier.

Since 2002, Iwata has focused on expanding the overall gaming population by launching game machines and software like the "Wii Fit" home exercise game, rather than competing head-on with Sony and Microsoft in enhancing the speed and power of game consoles.

That strategy appears to have paid off handsomely as the Wii is outselling Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 by a large margin, allowing Nintendo to forecast an operating profit more than three times as big as Sony's.

- Reuters