Report: Wii holiday sales hit 744k in Japan

In anticipation of its press conference at this year's Consumer Electronics Show yesterday, Sony gave the number-crunching crowd a bit of a gristle with word that 3.9 million PlayStation-branded products in North America had sold during the busy holiday shopping season, 1.2 million of which were PlayStation 3s.

With the NPD Group's sales statistics not expected until later this month, it's difficult to say how the console race shook out for each of the hardware manufacturers. However, adding further shades of color, Microsoft issued its own self-congratulatory stats feed last week, noting 17.7 million Xbox 360s had been sold since the console's November 2005 launch. Though the hardware maker did not disclose exact sales figures for 2007, previously announced tallies indicate approximately 7.3 million Xbox 360s were sold on the year.

While Nintendo has yet to trumpet its sales figures for the holiday season and the year, Famitsu publisher and industry stat-tracker Enterbrain has called the Japanese holiday-season console race in favor of Nintendo, as reported by Reuters. According to Enterbrain's figures, Nintendo's five-week tally ending December 30 amounted to 774,123 Wiis sold in the island nation, compared with 232,421 PS3s sold during the same period. Microsoft, which continues to flounder in the Japanese market, shifted a mere 38,994 units for the busy holiday month in Japan.

As noted in the Reuters report, Nintendo boasted a strong holiday lineup in Japan. Headlining the console maker's release slate for the month of December was Wii Fit, which isn't expected to arrive in North America until early 2008. According to the latest sales feed from Japan's other stat-trackers, Media Create, Wii Fit has sold 749,000 units since it launched in Japan on December 1.