20th January 2004, 2:30 PM
Quote:According to Nintendo Europe today, the company's successful console sales numbers are not privy to the US alone. Experiencing an incredible surge in hardware sales for both the Nintendo GameCube and Game Boy Advance during the holiday season, this news helped solidify Nintendo's position in the videogame industry. Claiming it to be the biggest Christmas yet for its home console, Nintendo stated an increase of 88% in sales of its GameCube hardware in Europe, compared to the same period the previous year. Nintendo is closing in on the 3 million marker for total GCN sales in Europe. As well, Nintendo's strong holiday line-up, which included games such as Mario Kart: Double Dash! and Mario Party 5, helped boost software sales by 45%.
As if Santa wasn't gracious enough, the GameBoy Advance also saw generous numbers across the board for the 2003 year in Europe. With GBA and GBA SP total sales topping at 33% higher than the previous year, Nintendo is giving the handheld competition a run for its money, and is strengthening its ground for when Sony's Playstation Portable hits the market. Handheld software sales saw the largest jump, eclipsing even the numbers Nintendo made with their GameCube. More than doubling the previous year's Christmas results, GBA software sales for this period shot up 104% with special recognition made due to Nintendo's perpetually popular Pokemon series of games.
There's probably nothing but smiles on the faces of the staff at Nintendo, particularly with the GCN. With stats that continually surprise Nintendo itself, and hardware numbers rising no less than 70%, Nintendo has become a force to be reckoned with in both the US and Europe. With incredible growth near the end of the 2003 season, 2004 is looking all that much brighter.
It's like people finally woke up and realized that there's another console out there besides PS2 and Xbox.
N-Philes
Sometimes you get the scorpion.