Wii sales hit 800,000 over Thanksgiving weekend

More than doubles last year's 350k

8 December 2008 17:06 GMT / By Verity Burns

Nintendo has reported strong sales over the Thanksgiving weekend in the States, with company boss Satoru Iwata stating around 800,000 Wii consoles were sold across the country.

If this is true, that more than doubles the 350,000 sold over the same weekend last year. And they say we're in a credit crunch.

"When the economy is strong, people tend to buy three things from the top of their wish list", said Iwata.

"But when things are bad, people often buy only the first thing on their list - fortunately for us a lot of shoppers put our products at the top of their list".

This mad shopping spree by American gamers has now caused many shops reporting to be out of Wii stock in the run up to Christmas, which is certainly less than ideal. Even worse, this is apparently a situation Nintendo had predicted but did nothing to remedy. Meanies.

Also up were DS sales, which saw an increase of around 20% on last year's Thanksgiving sales.