Why are excuses needed? The game is selling out, it's pushing a ton of hardware... I'm in Europe, I bought a Wii yesterday (because I'm afraid it will sell out and I want one this year), but I couldn't buy SMG, and have to look at other stores to get it.

@cklmb: I don't see any need for excuses, as long as SMG is supply constrained. Of course it's possible that it won't sell, but let's wait until it's freely available. If Nintendo can ramp up the supply, i believe SMG had the worst week this year in Europe. Anyway, the 70k is just for UK.

@Onna: UK is one of the places in Europe, that Nintendo has had some support.

@etuoyo: Well, 70k isn't bad sales. As being supply constrained and being outsold only by 2 heavily advertised games, i don't think Nintendo has anything to worry about. Except maybe ramping production up.
Actually, given how fast it has sold, you can't expect attach rates rise at the same level with much slower selling 360. You should also note, that when looking at CoD4 sales, it tells what kind of gamers have bought 360 and the same thing works with PS3.

I always thought UK sales = 1/3 of the sales of others.

So 70k X 3 = 210k ?

@Just_Ben : And in France too

This is 2 days only!35k per day is great.Multiply it and you'l see that next weeks sales will be at least 200k.

Also:
There are multiple reports coming in stating that the Wii is next to impossible, if not indeed impossible to find in the UK. Online retailers are getting 100,000 requests a day for the Wii. Amazon is said to have sold out of 1000 Wiis in just 10 minutes last week. Multiple retailers are completely out of stock, and cannot guarantee customers a Wii before Christmas. There is no doubt…the Wii is the hot item in the UK and North America.

Quoted by Gonintendo

Sorry, but where do you see it?

He postet yesterday UK time 22 O'clock. Do you find any reference to charttrack data before that time?

GI news was later (8 a clock today, British summer time).

Can't believe Chart track releases their sales at night. So please come up with an article press release to verify your statement.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with that attach rates line. Do you know the Wii install base is 1,449,944 and the 360 install base is 1,520,468 in the UK? Talking about attach rates rising is useless when the systems have almost the same exact number of users. The fact is people bought a 360 to actually buy games and not all the Wii users have the same desire to buy as many.

No matter how you slice it, it's pretty pathetic that a 70k opening week is the biggest week in Wii history when it's one of the fastest selling consoles in history. Halo 3 (475k)>COD 4 (170k)>Assasins Creed (135k)>Gears of war>Super mario galaxy (70k). That is the top 5 opening weeks for next gen consoles in the UK. Gears of war had only a fraction of the userbase the Wii has now last year and it did a better first week.

It's fine if SMG is supply constrained, however that doesn't make up for all the games before it who couldn't out perform 68k for the first week. People just don't buy games on the Wii with the same intensity that 360 and apparently PS3 (maybe) owners do. That's nothing wrong with that though since I believe the Wii's soon to be massive lead over both consoles in the UK and other Pal territories will allow it to sell more games in the end.

You know what, I don't the sales are all that weak after I think it through. 70k first day in the UK would indicate something like 100k first week, with around 300k first week in the whole of Europe. Not as much as I'd expected, but not ;___;worthy either.

All I know is that while trying to get in on the buy 2 get 1 free Toys R Us deal, I have yet to see a store without a ton of copies of Mario Galaxy. Also, last week they were giving away a $25 gift card if you bought it. Only 2 of the 5 stores around here sold out during that time. I don't know if that is a bad sign for US numbers or it is just Nintendo made sure they put enough copies into the wild.