January 15th, 2009

Nintendo Wii In Europe

Yesterday, we were talking about the milestone reached by the PlayStation 2 in the US, and now the time has come for another console, the Nintendo Wii. No, we won't talk about any US Nintendo Wii statistics, since Europe is also a good market for game consoles, although the spread of these devices is not constant all over the continent.

According to Nintendo themselves, their gaming system sold over 8.3 million units during 2008 in Europe, 58 percent more than the previous year, and also the largest annual sales of home consoles in European history! Well, from a US milestone to a European record, that's not bad, don't you think? And when you think about the crisis everyone is talking about...

On the other hand, the portable Nintendo DS managed to break its own records, with over 11.2 million units sold last year, bringing the total installed base all the way up to 31 million.

"The sales trend on both Wii and Nintendo DS, hardware and software during 2008 shows that more and more people in Europe are enjoying video games as part of their daily lives. This proves that Nintendo’s wish to expand the gaming population has strong potential in Europe," said Laurent Fischer, managing director of marketing and PR for Nintendo Europe.

The future may look a bit dark for some industries, but not for most of those in the gaming industry. All I can say about those layoffs that happened already and are also going to follow is that the market sanctioned those who believed a brand can sell a game alone, and I won't give any names here...