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Hmm...according to this Seattle Post-Intelligencer article, for the month of January, the number one selling gaming console in the US was?

The Nintendo Wii.

The numbers:

Wii: 436,000 units sold
PS2: ~300,000 units sold
Xbox 360: 294,000 units sold
PS3: 244,000 units sold

Microsoft, of course crowed about outselling the PS3. Yeah. Because selling around 50,000 units more when you didn't even hit 300,000 yourself is such a huge margin. Of course, that kind of pales when the 360 still can't outsell the PS2. Dude, until you can outsell a console that came out what, five years ago?, you have to STFU about how well you're selling.

It's even worse for Microsoft and their crowing when they got spanked by the Wii, which was the only console to outsell the friggin' PS2! Nintendo sold 142,000 more Wiis than Microsoft sold 360s. For every 360 Microsoft sold, Nintend0 sold just under 1.5 Wiis. (For Sony, it's a mixed bag. Nintendo sold almost 1.8 Wiis for every PS3 sold, but the PS2 numbers more than make up for it when you consider the profit Sony is making on those. From a l33t standpoint it sucks, from a money standpoint, it's sweet, sweet profit all the way baby.)

Let me put it this way...the Wii is cheaper, has no hard drive, and no HD, and, quite literally, shat all over both of the HD systems. It didn't just outsell them a little. It spanked them. How bad? Both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 combined only outsold the Wii by 102,000 units. Combined, they didn't even outsell the Wii by 25%. How sad is that?

very

Now, what does this say to the claim of the HD fanboys, most notably Le Scoble, who in his post from November 16th, 2006 pretty much said that HD was the main reason behind people waiting in line for game consoles, and has relentlessly ignored the Wii? (Search his site: Two posts mention the Wii. Search for Xbox 360 or Playstation, see those numbers. See how many posts are all a-twitter about HD)

It says that they're full of shit. People want game consoles to play games and have fun, and that is what the Wii has given them, on the cheap. While Microsoft and Sony were all chasing the tech-spec fellatio, Nintendo chased the "people who want to have fun when they play video games". I'd say they have a better long term strategy. Especially when you consider that with their download library, the Wii's game library is nigh-infinitely larger than anything on a PS or an Xbox.

Scoble and his friend Buzz tried to convince me in S.F. that HDTV was a religious experience and that it would change everything and that HD is all that matters.

I tried, just as unsuccessfully explain that HD is just prettier content, and that it is the content that matters, not how many damned lines per inch of it you get.

I feel so much better about that opinion. Sure, the Wii sales may flatten. But right now, it's the only thing outselling the PS2. Were I the 360 team, i'd be busy eating that crow that Nintendo and the PS2 served me, instead of trying to serve some to Sony. I hope Nintendo as a company goes out and has a big damned party, because they're certainly earning it.

To all the people thinking that HD was some kind of magic spell? Grow up already.

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