Nintendo Hopes to Sell 1 Million Wii Consoles by Early December
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Nintendo of America president, Reggie Fils-Aime, expects to sell 1 million Wii units to North American consumers by early December.
Speaking to Reuters, Fils-Aime revealed that Nintendo expects to sell 1 million Wii consoles within the next two to three weeks, and another 1 million by the second week of January. He also added that a life span of four to six years for the Wii would be "just about right."
"We designed [Wii] from the get-go to be profitable," said Fils-Aime, "so it will be past this weekend and throughout its entire life. Because we're a gaming company, we have to be profitable in the gaming business. It's not like our competitors who can make profit in operating systems or TVs to offset their losses on the gaming side."
Despite, Reggie Fils’ optimism, retailers and analysts across North America confirm that the hottest selling gaming console this past weekend was the Xbox 360.
In Canada Microsoft Game Studios was offering a three game deal with a system with a 20GB hard drive and an extra controller at one retailer for $449.99. One of the free games was Gears of War and when that sold out gamers could get the new Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and Xbox Live Arcade: Unplugged.
Microsoft also dropped the price of several of their Xbox 360 games and peripherals to try and out-market Sony and Nintendo.
As a result gamers will be hard-pressed to find an Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or a Nintendo Wii on store shelves at least for the rest of this week.
"Retailers had a great four-day run and pretty much everything is gone. Sony dropped the ball and Nintendo didn't do that much better," said one Great Canadian Superstore electronics store manager who wished to remain anonymous. .
"They over-promised and under delivered in terms of the quantity of Wii systems that were available. Sony on the other hand warned everyone that supplies would be severely limited. Microsoft was the big winner. They had lots of systems and they had them priced right with game bundles that gamers were interested in."
