The Wii has ushered in a new golden age for Nintendo, and Next-Gen has compiled the latest stats from the game maker, illustrating what can only be described as a "phenomenon"--even compared to the NES and SNES days.

 

On April 25, 2008 the president of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, presented the results of his company's financial results for the fiscal year which ended with March 2008. Accompanying his remarks to investors were several graphs and figures which are worth examining in detail.

Along with slides from President Iwata's presentation, we present some additional figures extracted from those graphs. Moreover, we put in historical context the sales figures that Nintendo released a day earlier, on 24 April 2008. Below you'll find:

• Graphs of Wii LTD sales across four important territories: Japan, the U.S., the U.K. and Germany.
• Estimated monthly shipments of Wii consoles to those territories, revealing how Nintendo has increased production.
• Comparisons of first-party and third-party Wii software sales in the U.S., Japan, and Europe.
• Graphs of Nintendo's annual revenue since 1991, revealing the explosive impact of Wii sales.

Worldwide Wii Sales

According to the financial results that Nintendo announced on Thursday, it has sold 24.45 million Wii systems worlwide since the console launched in November 2006. These systems are distributed across the world in approximately the following proportions:



As the graph above shows, the United States has received the lion's share of Wii hardware: 8.8 million systems. Second comes Japan with 5.6 million systems. In Europe the United Kingdom is home to approximately 2.5 million Wiis and Germany has just under a million. The rest of the world – which includes the remaining parts of Europe as well as countries like Australia and Canada – accounts for more than a quarter of all Wii hardware sales.