A discrepancy of over 1 million units is pretty big, really, for one country.
As for the celebs they're hiring, though I can't stand Jedward and find Ant and Dec pretty annoying, I must admit Nintendo are once again being canny with their end of year advertising. They've got several of the more successful/well known X Factor contestants heading up a marketing campaign while the new series of X Factor is pulling in millions of viewers every week in the UK. Plus, Terry Wogan and Helen Mirren are extremely well known and very well respected over here and are a big plus for Nintendo's advertising campaign.
It also baffles me no other games company has learnt and applied one of Nintendo's big marketing tricks-advertising older games consistently helps keep them on the market as evergreen titles, selling mainly to new consumers picking up the Wii/DS for the first time. It's easy money and easy sales, really.
EDIT: If you're wondering were I got the info on the other celebs: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2010-10-04-one-in-three-households-have-wii-console Helen Mirren is advertising Wii Fit Plus.
