OMG Nintendo.com

GameIndustry.biz is waiting long to get into the holiday sales analysis for the video game industry, and right now the numbers suggest that we won Christmas. Even when financial institutions are reeling from the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market, people still want to play games... and they especially want the low-priced Wii and DS. Check behind the cut for the Nintendo-related chunk of the article, though it's all a good read.

In acknowledging and celebrating the wonderful success of the market in 2007, it would be remiss not to mention that the driving force behind much of that success was Nintendo. Microsoft's Xbox 360 has been a wonderful console for hardcore gamers this year, but the immense upturn we've witnessed in the market overall can largely be attributed to the ongoing push which the DS and Wii are making into previously untapped demographics.

The figures speak for themselves - the Nintendo DS, selling 200,000 units in a single week in the UK. The Wii, selling 100,000 units. Both of those, we suspect, represents a complete clear-out of the entire weekly shipment. Had Nintendo shipped more units, they would have sold more - but with the same picture being repeated elsewhere in the world, there simply aren't any more units to sell.

The stage is set for an extremely interesting - and very successful - 2008. Nintendo's installed base of both DS and Wii is a force to be reckoned with, and 2008 will be the make or break year for third parties on those platforms. If they can make a profitable business out of publishing Wii titles (and it has to be noted that despite Microsoft's sneering at this side of the Wii's success, some third parties are rolling it in on the platform), then Nintendo's dominance will be hard to touch.

If, on the other hand, the third parties can't make the Wii work for them... Well, if they can't, it remains to be seen whether Nintendo will lose out. It could be that the Wii continues to sell on the basis of first-party, and third parties simply miss the boat - an uncomfortable, but not entirely unlikely, prospect.

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