IGN is reporting via Famitsu that Enterbrain, the publisher of Famitsu, has released numbers that have the Wii selling 5,019,337 units in Japan from its launch on December 2, 2006 to January 20, 2008. Clearly the system is beyond popular in its home country (as well as the rest of the world) as it only took 60 weeks to reach this mark. This makes the Wii the second fastest selling system ever, beating out the PS2 which took sixty-six weeks to sell as many. What is number one, you ask, already knowing the answer? It is of course everyone’s favorite money printing machine the DS which only took fifty-six weeks to reach the 5 million mark.

The Wii has 4 games over the one million mark. The best selling Wii game so far is Wii Sports with, according to the latest numbers issued by Enterbrain, 2,663,938 units. Trailing behind it are Wii Play (2,139,084 units), Mario Party 8 (1,153,648) and the hard-to-find Wii Fit (1,113,626). While it is great that the system is selling so well I wish there were more non-casual games above that one million mark. What would be even greater was if there was an actual third party game selling that well on the Wii. As it stands all these numbers prove, especially with Super Mario Galaxy in fifth at 843,961, is that more serious games and third party games don’t stand a chance. Yet another reason for everyone to go out and buy No More Heroes today. I’ve already got my copy.

Get ready for some incredibly big numbers because I’m about to unload 2007 videogame sales on you and they are really massive. According to the NPD group overall videogame sales (console software, hardware and accessories, etc., etc.) were nearly $18 billion for 2007. This would be an increase of 43 percent over 2006 and is also commonly referred to as a shit-ton of money. Someone better be pulling a Scrooge McDuck money vault swim right now or it’s all going to waste if you ask me.

Breaking the numbers down, software sales totaled $8.64 billion for the year, an increase of 34 percent over 2006 with Halo 3 and Wii Play being the top selling games of the year with 4.8 million and 4.21 million units sold respectively. Looks like a free controller can do a lot for a game. Hardware wise it’s no surprise that the Wii and the DS dominated the market selling 8.5 million and 6.29 million units sold, respectively. Xbox 360 followed, selling 4.62 million, PS2 sold 3.97 million, PSP sold 3.82 million, and PS3 sold the least, with 2.56 million sold during the year. Of course with a year like this even coming in last isn’t that bad as the PS3 has been seeing a steady resurgence and sales are up for everyone.

Thanks mostly to the Wii and its plethora of peripherals (say that three times fast) peripheral sales were up 52 percent with sales reaching 2.26 billion dollars. The Wii Remote and nunchuck were the top sellers despite the release of this. Hit the jump for a list of the top selling games and some quotes from everyone’s favorite quote givers, analysts.

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Nintendo released yesterday the sizable lineup of games that will be released in the first half of 2008 and it’s giving Wii owners a hella lot to look forward to. Games such as Super Smash Bro. Brawl and Mario Kart are obvious givens and there aren’t to many major surprises but seeing Alone in the Dark in March on there gets me a bit excited and later on in “Summer” we’ll finally be getting some Wii light saber action when Star Wars: The Forced Unleashed hits shelves. Of course with the good comes the bad and it looks like there are plenty of quick and dirty mini-game cash-ins flooding the Wii game market too. I’m just guessing, but you’ll probably want to stay away from any game where the letter ‘S’ has been replaced with a ‘Z’ such as Kidz Sports Soccer, coming out in Feb. Of course the biggest release for these two quarters is going to be Wii Fit simply because it is so different.

On the DS side, things are looking very good as each year seems to bring bigger and better things for the hand held that was once considered a lame gimmick. There are still your Pet Pals: Animal Doctor but with innovative games such as N+, Professor Layton and (glee!) Apollo Justice flooding in I don’t think it’s going to seriously bother anyone. By the way, all three of those are out in Feb., leaving plenty more months for even more great games.

Hit the jump for the entire list of Wii and DS releases so you can plan your shopping now.

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To: All writers, new and old
From: backflip
Subject: Moving home, Nor’easters and holiday shopping

As you may or may not know, my finals concluded this past week and, as a result, I’ve been moving home to live with the ‘rents for a few weeks. On the car ride home, I had daydreams consisting of hours upon hours of uninterrupted gaming both on my 360 and Wii. Unfortunately, over the past couple of days, this has not been the case.

The night that I returned home, a giant Nor’easter hit the Tri-State area, and subsequently continued to ruin my weekend. I spent hours outside with a shovel in my hand and frown on my face, shoveling the driveway free from the wintry mix. Then, I was decidely swept up in Christmas shopping for the rest of the weekend, leaving approximately oh, 3 hours for me to game. Thus far I’ve gotten around 6 or so stars in Super Mario Galaxy, played through Halo 3’s new downloadable maps a few times (expect an impressions post soon) and beaten a few worlds in New Super Mario Bros on my brother’s DS.

Hopefully your weekends have been better.

In a press release yesterday Nintendo revealed that the Nintendo DS has sold at a rate of one every five seconds for the year of 2007. Through Nov. 30 more than 6 million Nintendo DS systems sold in the United States according to internal Nintendo of America Inc. sales numbers. These numbers are enough for Nintendo to project that once again the DS will be the top-selling system of the year despite the fact that two new launch systems have been selling strongly all year long. The casual market is clearly eating this up and the DS also has plenty of games for the hardcore, so I’m not terribly suprised. It also helped that the DS became the record holder for number of systems sold over Thanksgiving week. The previous record was 600,000, held by the GBA. The DS beat this by a whopping 50,000 systems, selling a total of 650,000 for the week.

Massive props to Nintendo for dominating the world with it’s quirky hand held which is showing no signs of slowing down. But before this becomes nothing more than a Nintendo love fest I do have a question. If the DS is selling so fast why are there not shortages for it like there are for the Wii. Nintendo is capable of pumping out enough DS systems to keep the shelves stocked, why not Wiis? I’m sure there is some perfectly good reason for this that is escaping my mind at the moment. Does anybody know?

Do you know what is scary? In the time it took you to read this Nintendo sold 6-10 more DS systems.

After reading US Prosecutor Kym Worthy’s list for the Detroit News about which games parents should avoid getting their children this Christmas, Kevin Cortez and I could not help but put together a revised list of games for parents to avoid at all costs this holiday season. Our list will be following the same format as Worthy’s, including the title of the game along with a witty snippet of information about each game.

Hit the jump for our marvelous attempt at creating a life-line for gaming confused parents, aligned in no particular order.

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This new video of Trauma Center: New Blood brings me back to last year’s holiday season when I was playing the DS to Wii port, Second Opinion. Needless to say, from what I’ve seen of New Blood thus far, it looks like it’s shaping up to be a worthy sequel of the first game.

While the gameplay may look painfully familiar, that’s actually a good thing. Why fix something that is certainly not broke? I’m definitely looking forward to getting into the OR with a friend to perform surgeries that otherwise could not be done alone. New Blood is now available, so look for it at your local game retailer.

The original Nanostray had a couple of flaws, but it was the first 3-D shooter for the Nintendo DS. Nanostray 2, however, makes up for this, by adding a ton of additional features, as well as tune ups for the older ones. I honestly cannot wait to play this game, as I’m a huge fan of side scrolling shooters, such as Ikaruga and Mobile Light Force 2 (I doubt anyone knows of this game, but I do love it).

Read on for the press release.

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