Super Mario 3D Land and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword helped Nintendo to a successful kickoff of the holiday sales season.
The new Nintendo 3DS game, Super Mario 3D Land, which landed in stores Nov. 11, has become the fastest selling portable Mario game in company history, selling more than 500,000 units since launch, says Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime.
Meanwhile, the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, released for the Nintendo Wii on Sunday, Nov. 20, has sold 535,000 copies since its U.S. launch, making it hte fastest-selling Zelda game ever, he says.
These strong new releases also drove sales of Nintendo 3DS and Wii systems, Fils-Aime says. Last week's 3DS sales tripled (by 325%) compared to sales the week of Nov. 6, the week before Super Mario 3D Land debuted; the week of its debut, sales rose 49% over the previous week.
"What this has been able to do is drive our Nintendo 3DS business in only eight months to surpass the full first year volume of the original DS and we still have the bulk of the holiday to go," Fils-Aime says, "and we still have the launch of Mario Kart 7 (out Sunday, Dec. 4) to continue driving our full-year sales on Nintendo 3DS."
Sales of the original Nintendo DS hit 2.37 million in the first year of its Nov. 2004 U.S. release.
The Nintendo Wii had its biggest Black Friday ever more with than 500,000 units sold just during Black Friday and the pre-Black openings at some stores, he says.
Fils-Aime thinks the Black Friday sales momentum could help Nintendo to a successful holiday sales season. "We know that Black Friday and that entire week is a key selling week and it is important for products like ours to have a jump in momentum and we were fortunate to see that," he says. "For us, it really was driven by unique and powerful software and what gives us confidence is that we still have more software to launch in the balance of this holiday period."
Also coming from Nintendo: Fortune Street (Dec. 5, for Wii), which Fils-Aime describes as "a franchise that has sold quite well in Japan. Imagine a board game meeting a grow-your- business all done in a video context with Mario and other Nintendo characters, as well as characters from Square Enix. It's a very interesting very unqiue title. We think it is going to do quite well for us during the holiday."
