Wii And Nintendo DS Sales Fuel Pokémon Momentum!
Grown Men and Women Rediscover the Games of their Youth
REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 6, 2007 - Pokémon® games have always been best-sellers. But the huge popularity of the portable Nintendo DS and the Wii home video game system has put the Pokémon craze into a whole new category.
Just check out these statistics:
According to the independent NPD Group, through July Pokémon Diamond is the best-selling video game of the year on any system, while Pokémon Pearl ranks No. 3. The newly released Pokémon Battle Revolution already ranks at No. 5 on the list of best-selling Wii games for the year. Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl for Nintendo DS have sold more than 3 million copies in the United States alone. Pokémon games have helped boost sales of Nintendo hardware. According to the NPD Group, Wii and Nintendo DS were again the two best-selling video game systems in the United States in July."These hard numbers show that the Pokémon franchise and Nintendo's systems are striking a chord with players of all ages and drawing in huge numbers of new players year after year," says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. "But anecdotally we're also seeing that these new Pokémon games are appealing to older players, the same ones who played the original Pokémon games when they debuted in the United States almost 10 years ago."
Grown men and women with kids of their own proudly announce they are training Pokémon and having a blast doing it. Gamer site www.Penny-Arcade.com ran a four-part comic about the artist's Pokémania, while Kristin Brandt of ManicMommies.com posted: "I have become obsessed. I have played for many, many hours (I can't even admit to how many - it's embarrassing) And I can't seem to stop! There are more Pokémon to capture, more levels to conquer and more badges to earn!"
The Pokémon franchise has sold more than 164 million games worldwide. For more information about Pokémon Battle Revolution, Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl, visit www.Pokemon-Games.com. Remember that Wii features parental controls that let adults manage the content their children can access. For more information about this and other Wii features, visit Wii.com.
Pokémon USA, Inc., a subsidiary of The Pokémon Company in Japan, manages the property outside of Asia which includes licensing, marketing, the Pokémon Trading Card Game, an animated TV series, home entertainment, the official Pokémon Web site and an online retail center www.pokemoncenter.com. Pokémon was launched in Japan in 1996 for play on Nintendo's Game Boy® and has since evolved into a global cultural phenomenon. Pokémon was introduced in North America in September 1998 and today is one of the most popular toy and entertainment properties in the world. For more information, visit www.pokemon.com.
The worldwide innovator in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its Wii, Nintendo DS, Game Boy® Advance and Nintendo GameCube systems. Since 1983, Nintendo has sold nearly 2.4 billion video games and more than 420 million hardware units globally, and has created industry icons like Mario, Donkey Kong®, Metroid®, Zelda and Pokémon®. A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo's operations in the Western Hemisphere. For more information about Nintendo, visit the company's Web site at www.nintendo.com.