New sales figures published in The Sydney Morning Herald show that the newly released Nintendo Wii, just on the market for three weeks in 2006, managed to outsell the Xbox 360 in fourth quarter sales in Australia. The Wii sold 51,744 units in three weeks compared to 45,036 Xbox 360 units sold for the entire three month period. The Wii launched on December 8, 2006. Nonetheless, PlayStation 2 remained the market leader with 122,639 units sold.
Steve Wilson, managing director of EB Games, said: “Every retailer just sold what they had.” This is not unusual for a console launch and given how close it was to Christmas, sales could have been helped by that as well. “The Wii was constrained by inventory. We couldn’t get all the stock we wanted,” he said. In other words, things might have been good, but they could have been even better. With news that as many as 300,000 PlayStation 3 units may be sitting on store shelves in America, Nintendo has to be pleased to see Wii selling out across the globe.
