Nintendo Wii: 45 Million Served

The Nintendo Wii is a phenomenon. That much everyone knows, and now Nintendo’s got the latest numbers to prove it once again.

During its third fiscal quarter release this week, the video game company said that it had shipped nearly 45 million Wii consoles globally since launch in November 2006. The DS handheld also keeps on racking up the sales with 96 million sold.

Sales of such magnitude are obviously good for the books, and in the months between April 2008 and December 2008 Nintendo saw global sales of 1.546 trillion yen ($17.12 billion), up 17 percent over the same period in 2007, according to GameSpot.

Operating profits were up even greater at 27 percent over the previous year at 501 billion yen ($5.58 billion), with net profits of 212.5 billion yen ($2.36 billion).

"This marks the fourth consecutive year that Nintendo Co., Ltd. has exceeded the previous results for the same nine month period," the company stated in its financial recap, quoted by IGN. "Nintendo will continue to pursue expansion of the gaming audience and provide products that offer unique entertainment that puts smiles on the faces of people of all ages and genders."

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata will be headlining the upcoming Games Developer Conference in March with a keynote address titled “Discovering New Development Opportunities.” We suppose that “Discovering a Gold Mine” would have been a bit tacky, eh?