Bah so much seemingly contradictory information in these articles because they rarely say the timeframe for the totals they reference and whether the stuff is Americas or worldwide.

Published: July 21, 1985

The infamous Atari dump:

Published: September 28, 1983

Someone just find Nintendo's shipment reports from the early 1990s and late 80s. Lots of misleading info on the net w/o dates for the periods the totals are from, and in some cases the writers don't differentiate shipments by location (i.e. worldwide totals or Americas totals).

Anyone else have access to business databases through their universities? I've found some interesting stuff in Galenet

First of all:

Effective September 1, 1989, the company changed fiscal year-end from August 31 to March 31. As a result, fiscal 1990 consisted of seven months, compared to 12 months in fiscal 1991.

And Then I found:

FORTUNE has used estimates for annual sales and profits because Nintendo recently changed its fiscal year from August to March without restating historical results. For the seven-month period ended in March, it reported $208 million of profit on $1.5 billion in sales.

Then this:

Full Text: COPYRIGHT Geyer-McAllister Publications Inc. 1991
REDMOND, WASH. -- Nintendo Company Ltd. has announced gains in both sales and earnings for the past year.

Fiscal 1991's consolidated net earnings of $489 million were 22 percent higher than fiscal 1990, and consolidated sales of $3.343 billion from the previous year increased 14 percent.

Because the company changed its fiscal year-end, fiscal 1990 consisted of only seven months while fiscal 1991 year-end included 12 months.

Comparisons between the two years are based on their respective net income and sales dividend by the number of months in each fiscal year.

Nintendo Entertainment System sales showed continued momentum, with worldwide system shipments surpassing the 48 million mark (This mean 48 million NES units were shipped worldwide as of March 31, 1991). Over 450 software titles are now manufactured for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Nintendo's compact video game system, Game Boy, also showed growth. The Game Boy worldwide installed base now stands at 12 million units. More than 150 titles can be played on the Game Boy system.

In November, 1990, Nintendo launched the 16-bit Super Famicom system. Within five months, Super Famicom system sales have exceeded 1.4 million units and claims a majority of the 16-bit market in Japan.

This fall, the company will launch the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the North American counterpart of the Super Famicom, in the United States.

Still looking...

Wow. That's incredible. Nintendomination for real...

Wow! Nice read! Thanks, The Source and others. :D

I found this on Galenet too:

Time, May 28, 1990 v135 n22 p72(1)

Dr. Nintendo: the Mario Bros. - and $3 million - go to M.I.T.

(Nintendo donates money to to M.I.T. Media Laboratory for the development of educational games and research into playing as an educational tool)


Full Text: COPYRIGHT Time Inc. 1990

Poor Nintendo. The Japanese conglomerate may have enthralled youngsters with the world's most popular home-video games, but it gets no respect from adults. An antiviolence watchdog group has rated some 70% of the company's games "harmful for children." Physicians warn that too much rapid-fire button pushing can lead to hand strain, a condition dubbed Nintendinitis. And many parents, seeing their kids play Super Mario Bros. for hours on end, are asking what a nonstop diet of synthetic reality is doing to impressionable young minds.

Now Nintendo, with a $2.7 billion U.S. market to protect, may be trying to buy some respect. It has created a $3 million fund at M.I.T.'s Media Laboratory to study "how children learn while they play." "This is not guilt money," insists Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte. The cash will be given, apparently with no strings attached, to support the work of Professor Seymour Papert, creator of the Logo computer language and one of the most influential names in computer education. His research could eventually lead to new and better kinds of Nintendo games.

For a distinguished educator to take money from the purveyor of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video game may seem like the American Cancer Society soliciting funds from a cigarette company. But Papert has always been a maverick. In his seminal book Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas, he advocates a self-motivated approach to education that gives as much importance to the lessons learned in computer play as those drilled home in textbooks. He has received funding in the past from the National Science Foundation, IBM and Lego Systems.

Nintendo has so far squandered a rare opportunity to use its market position to do some good. The 40 million Nintendo systems installed around the world are powerful little computers that could deliver rich and rewarding experiences. Instead, Nintendo chose to give the world's children RoboCop and Bionic Commando. Too bad the company did not seek out Papert, or people like him, long before this.

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Since Nintendo swtiched to fiscal years ending March 31, and this article was written in May 1990, its likely referring to figures through March 31, 1990. The article I cited above refers to 'five months of SNES sales' in Japan through fiscal year 1991, so it looks like NES went from 40m on March 31 1990 to March 31 1991

Mega Drive launched two years before Super Famicom (October 29 1988), but Super Famicom overtook it within five months. I'm surprised Mega Drive hadn't even sold 1.4m after 2 1/2 years in Japan.

PC Engine launched October 30 1987, but was technically 8-bit, so was probably still ahead of Super Famicom (it went on to sell around 7.5m in Japan).