Microsoft: "The Wii third party game story is not a pretty one"

Microsoft has hit back at claims made by Nintendo that the Wii sells the most third party games, saying instead that it's Xbox 360 sells the most.

Last week, Nintendo of America's vice president of corporate affairs, Denise Kaigler, defended the Wii's third party sales saying, "We are selling third party games and they are doing very well, and better than our competitors."

But according to NPD information obtained from Microsoft by GamesIndustry.biz, that Nintendo claim appears to be wrong:

• Total third party sales for the Xbox 360 since launch is currently 67,929,999 units, followed by the Wii at 33,394,311 units and the PlayStation 3 at 19,976,325 units.
• Third party sales for the Xbox 360 since the launch of the Wii and PS3 is 54,065,728 units, still almost double the Wii's 33,394,311 units.
• If you take the total number of units sold and divide that by the number of titles released since November 2006, the Xbox 360 and the PS3 are selling more units per title on average than the Wii. This puts the Xbox 360 at 217,252 units per title, the PS3 at 156,065 units and the Wii at 132,517 units.

"No matter how you slice it, the Wii third party game story is not a pretty one," commented David Dennis, group manager of corporate PR at Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business.