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DSi sells 2.2 million in US, no more Wii price cuts in '09

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime tells CNBC handheld's double-platinum milestone, says software will sell hardware at current $199 cost.

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Reggie Fils-Aime is on the publicity warpath. The same day he bragged to the Financial Times that the Wii price cut was eliciting a "strong" response, Nintendo of America's president and COO chatted with CNBC anchorwoman Maria Bartiromo.

Reggie Fils-Aime.
Reggie Fils-Aime.

Fils-Aime himself was forceful when asked if his company was planning any further price cuts following last month's $200 Wii repricing, misidentified by Bartiromo as "$299." "Absolutely not," he declared, saying the "great drumbeat of new software" such as New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Wii Fit Plus would buttress sales of the console.

The executive also said he doesn't expect there to be Wii shortages this holiday season, even at the new price point. He then boasted that the console went 34 months without a price drop, topping 20 million units sold in the US alone.

Another major nugget of news came almost offhandedly, when Fils-Aime was asked if he had any worries about consumers being overly frugal this holiday season. He responded thusly: "If you give the consumer great value in terms of what they pay, they're willing to spend, and we say based on the experience of launching the DSi this past April, we've already sold 2.2 million units." (Emphasis added.)

When asked for clarification, Nintendo reps told GameSpot the figure was for DSi sales in the US through August. During that month, the camera-enabled handheld accounted for 190,000 of the 552,900 DS handhelds sold domestically, and Nintendo reps said they expected similar figures when NPD reports September sales next week.

The last time Nintendo offered sales figures for the DSi was at its E3 Press Briefing in June, when it announced the portable had sold 1 million units both in the US and Europe. Recently, though, the DSi has been hit by controversy after reports surfaced that games downloaded to the handheld are not transferable to other DSis.

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