This year’s Black Friday has proven to be a prosperous one for Nintendo, according to USA Today. The highly anticipated adventure title The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is now the fastest-selling Zelda game in history, moving over 535,000 copies in the US in its first week. Meanwhile, the 3DS platformer Super Mario 3D Land has sold over half a million units in the US since it launched, making it the fastest-selling portable Mario title. These sales helped boost 3DS sales significantly; for the week of November 20, the new portable system had a sales increase of 325% compared to the week of November 6. The total sales of the 3DS have now eclipsed the first-year sales of the Nintendo DS, which moved 2.37 million units in its first twelve months. Nintendo anticipates continued strong sales through the end of the year, propelled by the imminent release of Mario Kart 7.
“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,” said Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. “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.”
I’m quite impressed that Skyward Sword sold faster than Twilight Princess, which was a launch title for the Wii. I suppose I underestimated the amount of hype surrounding the game. I’m glad to see that Nintendo retains that strong selling power.
