Longtime fans of Nintendo won’t be surprised that every one of Nintendo’s home consoles before the Wii sold less units than its predecessor. The Wii broke this pattern and surpassed the GameCube in lifetime Japanese sales about a month ago, and now it’s passed another milestone. Five million Wii consoles have now been sold in Japan, eclipsing the local numbers posted by the Nintendo 64.
Next up would be the Super Famicom. I’m seeing various figures on lifetime sales of the classic system in Japan, but they seem to hover around 17 million. As for pacing, the Wii has sold over 5 million units in Japan in the same amount of time the Super Famicom sold just about 3.6 million units. It’s not a matter of “if,” it’s a matter of “when.”
