Nintendo has announced that they have sold an incredible 800,000 Wii units during the Thanksgiving week holiday, from November 23rd to November 29th.
That is more than double the amount (of 350,000) sold during the same week last year, despite the economic troubles. In fact it’s so much that Nintendo nearly matched the entire November 2007 monthly sales figures with the sales of the Wii during Thanksgiving week 2008, an incredible achievement.
As of September 30th, the Wii has sold nearly 35 million units worldwide, making it easily the best-selling platform of the current console generation.
And the monthly outlook for November may be even rosier. Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter estimates that the Wii sold a whopping 1.4 million units during November (He also predicts record sales of the reduced-price Xbox 360 at 800,000 units and steadily advancing PS3 sales at 400,000 units). Overall Pachter predicts that console sales overall were up 17% during the month of November with handheld sales dropping 5%.
As far as Nintendo’s DS handheld is concerned, sales were up 20% of last year for the week of Thanksgiving, but Nintendo did not provide exact figures. The uptick in sales comes despite the unveiling of the DSi, which is the third redesign in the DS system hardware that includes built-in cameras, a web-browser and the ability to download software via an online store. The DSi won’t be released until “well into 2009” and has been selling briskly in Nintendo’s home country of Japan since it went on sale last month. Despite that, sales of the DS in the U.S. are still selling like hotcakes as is the Nintendo Wii, which is simply off the charts.