Despite Lagging Sales, Nintendo Still King In 2010

DS was #1 seller, Wii was #2

Jan 14 2011, 8:45am CST | by Mark Raby

Despite Lagging Sales, Nintendo Still King In 2010

Long gone are the days when Nintendo was selling more consoles than its competitors, combined, multiplied by two. But at least in 2010, it is still at the top of the lists, if by a thread.

The Nintendo DS, despite having the oldest hardware of any system on the market, was the best-selling video game device, raking in 8.5 million unit sales in 2010. That's less than it has done in previous years, but still enough to place it at the top of the list.

In second place was the Wii, with 7 million units. Again, it's done better before, but that's still enough to beat out the PS3, Xbox 360, and PSP.

Total lifetime sales for the Nintendo DS now tops 47 million units. That, of course, includes the original DS, the DS Lite, the DSi, and the DSi XL. Although the company has continued to introduce new versions of the device, it considers them all to be the same. Some may have issues with that, since the DSi hardware is slightly different and there are games that only work on DSi platforms, not the DS or DS Lite.

Nevertheless, where that isn't an issue is with the Wii. The innards of that console have never changed, and Nintendo has now sold more than 34 million of those.

"Nintendo has sold more game systems than anyone else for five years running. Of the quarter billion hardware systems sold in the United States during the past 10 years, Nintendo sold more than half," said Nintendo communications director Charlie Scibetta in a statement.

Despite this positive press release Nintendo issued, it has reason to worry. It can't stay at the top of the game forever, and it's losing more momentum than Sony or Microsoft. It hopes to put a freeze on that decline when it launches the 3DS system later this year. It will be the first brand new video game platform from a major hardware manufacturer in more than four years.

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Mark Raby
Based in New York City, Mark follows the consumer electronics industry like a hawk. A published book author, he has a particular affinity for 3D technology and video games, and as such will surely be in the market for a new pair of glasses soon. Mark can be contacted directly at mark@i4u.com.