Nintendo released its fiscal 2008 earnings, and the news was all good. The company reported sales in the 2008 fiscal year of ¥1.67 trillion (about $16 billion), 73 percent more than last year. Net income improved 48 percent to 257 billion yen ($2.6 billion), and the yearly dividend nearly doubled from ¥690 per share ($0.82 per American Depositary Receipt, which is what a U.S. investor would trade in) in 2007 to ¥1,260 per share ($1.51 per ADR) this year. The company now has ¥1.1 trillion ($10.5 billion) in cash and equivalents, up from ¥689 billion ($6.6 billion) last year.

Nintendo's forecasts for next year are also bullish: the company expects a 26 percent jump in net profit. These numbers mean that the business is doing very, very well, but they also paint the picture of a gaming juggernaut that is going to be harder to combat than Nintendo's competitors would have liked; nearly every criticism leveled against Nintendo has been answered with cold, hard numbers.

Wii owners buying games in droves

One of the ongoing bits of "accepted wisdom" in regards to the Wii is that no one is buying games; there is the perception that many casual gamers are simply using their system as a Wii Sports box. The New York Times recently ran a story claiming that Nintendo had low attach rates for the system; their source for these numbers, VGCharts, has gone on record to disagree with the analysis of its own data.

According to Nintendo's own data, each Wii owner has purchased 6.07 games for their system since launch worldwide, a figure that's in line with the competition. The US audience is even hungrier for Wii games, as the attach rates for systems in America is 7.48 games per system. In the past fiscal year, Nintendo increased its amount of million-sellers on the Wii from five to 26. Super Smash Bros. Brawl has sold 4.85 million units worldwide alone, and that's before the game even launches in the UK. This isn't counting the millions of Virtual Console games being sold, which amount to almost pure profit for Nintendo.





Wii hardware sells well internationally. Data source: Nintendo

There is also the fact that Nintendo is doing well in multiple regions, which is a large advantage against Sony and Microsoft's weak sales worldwide. Microsoft may sell well in the US, but it's death in Japan, and is beaten by Sony in Europe. Sony has a good hold on Europe and excellent PSP sales in Japan, but the PS3 usually brings up the rear in US sales. Contrast that with Nintendo's strong sales in Europe, North America, and Japan, and you have a company that does well worldwide. Nintendo's strength in multiple regions, as well as almost surreal sales of both its portable and console system, make it a very formidable foe in the market.

You can say that the Wii isn't particularly friendly to third-party games, and there might be some truth there; the majority of runaway successes on the Wii have been published by Nintendo itself. You can, however, find titles by third parties that have sold over a million units each: titles like Guitar Hero III, Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, Carnival Games, Rayman Raving Rabbids, and even Red Steel have all surpassed the million mark. This isn't including the scores of games such as Lego Star Wars that move huge numbers; focusing on the NPD's top-ten list is rather shortsighted when it comes to gauging how games are doing: there is a huge margin between the million sellers on the list and failure.

The arguments against the Wii's apparent success—that players aren't using it after it's purchased, that game sales are low, and that it's a fad—are starting to ring hollow, and the latest data from Nintendo should go a long way towards silencing the critics. While developers are struggling to understand the Wii, trying to figure out how to deal with its prominence in gaming, or simply slamming it to the press, one thing is apparent: gamers know exactly what to do with the console.