Nintendo Sells Over 1 Million DS Units, 550,000 Wiis During Thanksgiving

Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) is typically one of the biggest shopping days of the year in the U.S. and officially kicks off the holiday shopping season. Although results seemed mixed for retailers overall, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) noted that traffic was up at electronics retailers; this likely benefited video game hardware, and Nintendo seemed to really take advantage. 

Nintendo of America announced today that during the Thanksgiving week, the company sold around 550,000 Wiis and more than 1 million Nintendo DS and Nintendo DSi portable systems. Nintendo noted that this DS sales figure "surpasses the all-time hand-held hardware sales record set by Game Boy Advance during Thanksgiving Week 2002." Wii sales on the other hand, while very solid, were actually down from the over 800,000 units sold during Thanksgiving week of 2008.

And because we all love wacky sales rate conversions, Nintendo also stated that its combined 1.5 million hardware units sold is equal to 150 Nintendo systems sold every minute continuously for the week – or more than 2.5 every second. "Holiday shoppers are finding value in our products' prices, and through a game-play experience that is unique to Nintendo," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. 

Nintendo did not issue any sales updates on software, but we'd guess that games like Wii Fit Plus and New Super Mario Bros. Wii likely flew off the shelves too.

As for Microsoft and Sony, according to VentureBeat, twice as many Xbox 360 consoles were sold during Thanksgiving week compared to the week before (specific sales data wasn't provided) and Sony is still compiling its PlayStation sales data. We'll bring you more sales information as we get it. Update: Sony has now announced that it sold 440k PS3s during Thanksgiving week.