NPD: Wii and DS back on top

The good times are back at Nintendo with the platform holder expressing its delight at smashing two hardware records in NPD’s December and 2009 North American video games market report.

Wii’s 3.8m unit sales in December smashes the old single-month record while the DS and DSi combined sold 11.2m units throughout 2009 – a brand new annual hardware record for the region.

Wii, Nintendo DS Lite and Nintendo DSi combined to sell more than 7m units in the month of December alone,” Nintendo of America’s vice president Cammie Dunaway stated. Clearly there is overwhelming consumer demand for fun games, motion controls and value.”

Nintendo also used its strong NPD showing to press home the belief that third party publishers should be focusing on its hardware – not shunning it.

This remarkable hardware sales surge presents a tremendous software opportunity for Nintendo and its third-party partners as we head into 2010,” Dunaway added.

The comments no doubt come as a response to the recent questions being asked of third party opportunities on Wii and DS by the likes of Ubisoft, Capcom and Sega.

Lifetime US Wii sales have now passed 27.2m and the DS’ 38.8m, taking the handheld past the Game Boy Advance’s lifetime American install base.