Wii and Grand Theft Auto IV Dominate Sales in a 1.2 Billion May

Posted June 14, 2008 at 5:05 am by Jim in Wii News

It looks like Mario Kart Wii and Grand Theft Auto IV rocked the markets in May, according to an article from the folks over at Game Daily. Mario Kart Wii took second place in May for sales, with a total 787,400 units sold, and Wii Fit right behind it, selling 687,700 units in May.

From the article from Game Daily:

Overall, year-to-date industry sales have now reached $6.58 billion, up 32 percent from last year. NPD analyst Anita Frazier noted that this exceeds total 1997 annual revenues, which shows just how far the industry has come in the last 10 years. “The industry is on pace to achieve revenues in the $21-$23B range for 2008,” she said.

Unsurprisingly, the late April release of GTA IV easily carried its momentum into May, as the title racked up another 871.3K in unit sales on Xbox 360 and 442.9K unit sales on PS3. Nintendo’s Mario Kart Wii once again took second place with 787.4K unit sales, followed by the fitness sensation Wii Fit, which sold 687.7K units. It’s worth noting that GTA IV has now generated combined sales of 4.2 million units in the U.S., which has already made it the top selling game of 2008 so far.

Also, the Nintendo line is holding its own against industry competitors Playstation and XBox:

Interestingly, although a number of analysts thought we might finally see the “GTA IV hardware bump” in May, that wasn’t really the case. PS3 sold 208.7K units while Xbox 360 sold just 186.6K units. The Wii easily took top honors again with 675.1K units. The DS put up another 452.6K unit sales, while the PSP sold 182.3K units (down about 10K). This is now the 4th consecutive month that the Wii and NDS have captured the top two spots.

We Love Wii! Apparently so do a whole bunch of other folks. Keep it up, Nintendo!