Wii widens Canadian sales gap

Nintendo is on a roll in Canada. The Wii and Nintendo DS have turned the hardware sales each month into a two-horse race, with each of them often doubling up the sales of any other system on the market. June was no exception, according to retail sales figures the industry-tracking NPD Group released to GameSpot this week.

For the month, the Wii sold just over 53,000 units, with the DS trailing behind at 45,700 systems sold. Sony's PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable were next in line, with 21,000 and 18,500 sold, respectively. On the rest of the next-gen front, Microsoft's Xbox 360 moved 13,500 systems, while the PlayStation 3 sold through 6,500 units and was trumped by the Game Boy Advance; Nintendo's portable predecessor to the DS sold 8,800 systems.

The industry as a whole took in C$91.5 million ($87.7 million) for the month, a 60 percent jump over the C$57.2 million ($54.8 million) posted for June of 2006. That's in line with the industry's totals for the year-to-date, as Canadian retail game sales for the first six months of 2007 reached C$497.8 million ($477.2 million), up a little less than 61 percent from last year's first-half total of C$310 million ($297.2 million).

Hardware sales and accessory sales both nearly doubled for the month, with the former up 93 percent from the previous June to C$39.5 million ($37.9 million) and the latter up 96 percent to C$11.3 million ($10.8 million). Interestingly, the hardware growth came almost exclusively from the home systems. Console sales were up more than 197 percent for the month, while the portable system market was virtually flat.

Retail software of all kinds was up more than 31 percent, from C$31 million ($29.7 million) to C$40.7 million ($39 million). That growth was similarly skewed to the console sector, which jumped nearly 42 percent to C$28.9 million ($27.7 million), while handheld games grew less than 12 percent to reach C$11.8 million ($11.3 million). The best-selling software titles of the month are listed below.

Canada's top 10 best-selling games for June 2007:

1. Mario Party 8--Wii
2. Wii Play with Wii Remote--Wii
3. Pokémon Diamond--DS
4. Value Pack (included games vary)--Xbox
5. Forza Motorsport 2--Xbox 360
6. Pokémon Pearl--DS
7. Guitar Hero II with guitar--Xbox 360
8. Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition--Wii
9. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess--Wii
10. Super Paper Mario--Wii