Wii Overtakes Xbox as US Best Seller

by Rob Walker | July 21, 2008 at 12:11 pm

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Ease of use, fun games and a cheap price point have catapulted Nintendo's Wii to the top of the North American sales charts.

After only 20 months in the market, the Wii has surpassed both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 in sales, with over 10.9 million units sold.

It is unclear how many games and peripherals were sold, which is where most of the money is made in the console market. Though with the popularity of family and party-style games and the amount of extras available, like extra controllers and the wii-fit jump plate, it wouldn't surprise me if those sales were extremely high as well.

Nintendo's Wii has overtaken Microsoft's Xbox 360 to become the best selling games console in the US.
Market research firm NPD Group said that some 666,000 Wii consoles were sold in North America in June, bringing total US sales figures to 10.9 million since its release in November 2006.

The latest figures mean that the Nintendo console is now outselling Microsoft's Xbox 360, which has been on sale a year longer.

For the first time, the Nintendo Wii has passed the Xbox 360 to become the best-selling console in the United States, despite the Xbox 360 releasing an entire year before the Nintendo Wii. PlayStation 3 is still a distant third. The official numbers are as follows (with picture charts at the bottom):

Nintendo Wii, 10,853,000 sales

Xbox 360, 10,492,400 sales

PlayStation 3, 4,854,300 sales

The Wii has officially outsold the Xbox 360 in the U.S., making it the number-one console in America, Nintendo said Thursday.

"After just 20 mos, Wii is the new console leader in the US @ nearly 10.9 million units, says NPD 2day."