Wii sold ´well over a million´ on Sunday, estimates Next-Gen

Nintendo may have sold in excess of a million Wii consoles on launch day, Next-Gen (note NOT nexgen) estimates:

Nintendo Wii got off to a flyer yesterday with major retailers reporting sell-outs. Although Nintendo has not released official figures, day one sell-through should be at well over a million. This would significantly up the current figure noted by NexGen Wars, which at the time of writing stands at just below 700.000. You may ask yourself how that site comes up with those figures. I asked the owner about how he gathers the figures and this is what he mailed back:

There is no special secret to getting these. It basically just takes time and research to estimate the numbers as closely as possible.

What I have done is gotten charts of monthly sales for the past few years, and figured out certain trends. Then I have gotten past sales data and estimated the pace at which the consoles will sell. After I have the estimate and the counter running, I just watch out for anny official announcements, and adjust anything accordingly.

The site has been up since early July, and I haven't had to adjust the sales for the Xbox 360 since then. So far my estimation method has been pretty much right on. Now for the new consoles it is a little harder since there is no previous sales data to go off of. What I do for these is research how many they are expecting to have on launch and by the end of the year. For the launch counter I get it to around the number expected, and then I slow it down to pace it so that it will reach a good estimate for the end of the year, and as usual I will adjust anything if any official word comes in.

No, the numbers aren't perfect, but so far it seems to have been a very good estimate.

I myself am confident that NexGen Wars is as reliable a source as it gets, in the absence of official figures. In this case, I do believe the Next-Gen estimate, though, and would not be surprised if NexGen adjusted their numbers accordingly.

Nintendo refused to comment on this story. In fact, the company has not released any shipment and sales figures concerning the US launch - and they told me that they do not know when that data will be made available.

So the counters some of you have in your signatures are around 300'000 out compared to more likely figuers :)