Japan gets 400,000 Nintendo Wii

Four times the amount Sony offered with the PS3

15 November 2006 12:16 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Nintendo will offer four times as many machines as Sony when it launches its Wii console in Japan on 2 December.

In a statement Nintendo said it will ship almost 400,000 units of its next generation Wii consoles. This number compares to just 88,000 for the PlayStation 3.

Nintendo, which has always been strong in its home territory of Japan has not according to the Beeb said how many consoles it will make available in the US or the UK where the Wii debuts on the 19 November and 8 December respectively.

Meanwhile according to Gamesindustry.biz, Enterbrain, publisher of Famitsu, has revealed the the tie-in ratio of software to PlayStation 3 sales is 0.98 – less than one game per console, suggesting a strong "portion of the 88,400 units sold were bought with the intention of selling on as part of the 'grey market'".

Furthermore rumours are starting to surface on the web that PlayStation is about to announce that it is reducing the number of units it is shipping into the US for this Friday's launch.

Full tags

Gaming, Nintendo Wii, Gaming hardware, Nintendo