10 million Americans pick up Wii Play

Since it was released in the US in February 2007, Wii Play has been a fixture on the NPD Group's top 10 charts. Officially classified as "software," the minigame collection continues to be wildly popular because it is bundled with the Wii Remote. The internally developed title--which received tepid reviews--is also severely discounted, costing just $10 more than the Wii Remote's $39.99 a la carte price.

Despite the controversy about Wii Play having turned NPD's monthly top 10 into an effective top 9 for two years, Nintendo is singing its praises. Today, the Kyoto, Japan-based game giant announced that Wii Play has sold 10 million units in the US alone as of the end of February. The figure puts it on par with the seven DS titles that Nintendo revealed hit the 10-million-unit mark earlier this month.

"Even if you believe people are buying Wii Play solely for the controller, that indicates that there are now more than 10 million people who have an extra Wii Remote controller in their homes," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing, in a statement. "When added to the 12.7 million Wii Remote controllers that have sold separately, this reinforces the growing 'social gaming' trend we have been seeing where friends and family use their Wii games as a social hub--both in person and online."

The 22.7 million Wii Remote-unit figure is noteworthy, given that Nintendo confirmed that US Wii hardware sales now total 19 million. That means Wii Remote sales have exceeded the console's installed base by 3.7 million.

As part of today's announcement, Nintendo also announced that the popularity of its DS handheld shows no signs of slowing down. The portable sold 588,000 units last month, bringing its life-to-date haul to 29 million units in the US--worldwide, it had shipped 100 million units as of last week.