Wii Breaks UK Sales Record

Britons swarm to Nintendo's new system as the company prepares to expand its back catalogue.

The lines that snaked in front of stores in London and across the UK on Thursday night and Friday for the debut of the Wii have resulted in Nintendo's console exiting the weekend as the fastest selling console yet.

Nintendo sold more than 105,000 Wiis over the weekend, according to an MCV report, more than doubling the 50,000 that were sold in the first 12 hours. The previous best-selling console was the Xbox 360, which sold 70,000 units in its first weekend last December.

The numbers would probably been higher still if Nintendo had been able to get more consoles onto shelves, but retailers around the country are reporting that they have sold out.

As impressive as the numbers are, the Wii isn't the fastest selling games hardware ever in the UK. That honour still remains with the PSP, which sold 185,000 units in its first three days in September 2005.

As in the US, most of the people who picked up a Wii also bought Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. According to industry watch group Chart Track, two-thirds of new Wii owners also bought a copy of Link's new adventure. Another big seller was Wii Play - a minigame collection that comes with a Wii remote.

The goal for Nintendo now is to follow up on the successful weekend by streaming both hardware and new games to stores over the coming weeks and months.

One area where the company is doing that is with the Virtual Console. Nintendo has fingered 20 games for release on the download system by the end of the year, including classics such as Gunstar Heroes (Mega Drive) and Super Castlevania IV (SNES). A complete list of the games due this year is below:

15 December

• Urban Champion (NES)
• Solomon's Keys (NES)
• Pinball (NES)
• Columns (Mega Drive)
• Gunstar Heroes (Mega Drive)
• Ristar (Mega Drive)
• Dr. Robotonik's Mean Bean Machine (Mega Drive)
• Alien Crush (Turbografx)

• Donkey Kong Jr. (NES)
• Soccer (NES)
• Tennis (NES)
• Space Harrier II (Mega Drive)
• Toe Jam & Earl (Mega Drive)
• Military Madness (Turbografx)

• Baseball (NES)
• Ice Hockey (NES)
• SimCity (SNES)
• Super Probotector (SNES)
• Super Castlevania IV (SNES)
• R-Type (Turbografx)

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo