Wii Rat

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced the 2007 holiday season finished as its best ever, with its busiest day being December 10. On that day, Amazon customers ordered more than 5.4 million items, which is 62.5 items per second. In addition, the company wrapped up its second year of Amazon Customers Vote, with more than 4.6 million votes cast during the promotion.

“We are very grateful to our customers,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “On behalf of Amazon.com employees around the globe, we wish everyone happy holidays and best wishes for 2008.”

Amazon.com 2007 Holiday Facts (www.amazon.com Only)

– Amazon.com sold Nintendo Wii systems at approximately 17 per second when they were in stock.

– Amazon.com sold enough high-def DVD players to cover seven football fields.

– If you lined up all of the GPS units Amazon.com sold this holiday, they would make a trail from New York to Philadelphia; however, a new trail wouldn’t be necessary with the use of a GPS.

– Amazon.com sold enough auto wrenches to stretch all the way around the Daytona 500 track.

– Amazon.com sold enough Hannah Montana wigs to outfit the entire audience at her December 20th show in Providence, RI.

– Amazon.com’s One-Day Shipping was extended an extra day through Sunday, December 23rd for Prime members this holiday season.

– The last Prime order placed on December 23 in time for Christmas delivery contained “Futurama, Vol. 1″ DVD, “Lost in Translation” DVD, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” CD, “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand paperback, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” CD, and “Pulp Fiction” (Two-Disc Collector’s Edition) DVD delivered to Herndon, VA on December 24th.
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comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released the results of a study of the frequency of online search inquiries for the most popular gadgets in the U.K., France and Germany this Christmas. The products studied were twenty different models of gadgets from the game console, mobile phone, and portable music player segments. The study covers the early stages of the Christmas shopping season during the first three weeks of November.

Cross-Country Popularity
Across the U.K., France and Germany the most popular gadget was the Nintendo Wii, with an average of 4.9 million weekly searches. The second most searched for gadget was the Apple iPod with 3.5 million searches. Rounding out the top five were the Nintendo DS Lite, the Sony Playstation PSP, and the Apple iPhone.

Bob Ivins, comScore EVP of European Markets said, “We know that music players, game consoles, and mobile phones are very popular with consumers this year. The interesting aspect of this study is identifying which products are generating the most consumer searches, which can provide retailers and manufacturers with important insight into the underlying consumer demand for each specific product.”
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In the first week of the 2007 holiday shopping season, Nintendo of America has sold more Nintendo products than at any other time in its history. This includes more than 653,000 Nintendo DS™ portable video game systems, 350,000 Wii™ home systems and millions of games and accessories throughout the United States - and the season is just getting started.

Nintendo DS set a new all-time sales record for Thanksgiving week, eclipsing the previous mark of 600,000 Game Boy® Advance systems sold during the same period in the United States in 2005. Nintendo DS remains on track to be the top-selling video game system of 2007.

Nintendo’s 350,000 Wii systems represent the highest one-week U.S. sales total outside of its launch week one year ago. Wii has been dubbed the must-have gift of the 2007 holiday season and has been placed at the top of numerous gift lists. Nintendo has repeatedly increased its shipments and its fiscal-year sales forecast for Wii in an attempt to meet soaring demand. Wii reached 5 million sold in the United States faster than any video game system in history, after only 12 months of availability there.
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IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that the microprocessors that will serve as the digital heartbeat of Nintendo’s upcoming Wii™ video game console are being shipped from IBM’s state-of-the-art East Fishkill, N.Y., fabrication facility.

Earlier this year, IBM and Nintendo signed a multi-year microchip production agreement to support the upcoming launch of Nintendo’s eagerly anticipated Wii video game console. The chip, code-named “Broadway,” will deliver experiences not previously possible on video game consoles.

“The first chips are in our possession,” said Genyo Takeda, Senior Managing Director/General Manager, Integrated Research & Development Division, Nintendo Co., Ltd. “Today’s milestone marks the final stage of our drive to reach both core and nontraditional gamers with an inviting, inclusive and remarkable gaming experience.”
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Vgchartz.com, the most comprehensive Videogame charts in the world has announced that lifetime sales of Nintendo’s Wii have passed Microsoft’s Xbox 360 on a worldwide basis as of August 23rd. (*)

Two years ago, very few analysts would have predicted the Nintendo Wii would be market leader this generation against the established Playstation and Xbox brands. But analysts can be in error: Vgchartz.com data, which is based on sample data from retailers all over the world indicates that the week ending August 23rd Nintendo’s Wii (which was released one year after the Xbox 360 in November 2006), currently standing at 10.57 million consoles sold, passed Xbox 360 lifetime sales of 10.51 million units, making Nintendo the new market leader in both the home and handheld videogame console businesses.
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