No Game Boy Micro for me, but Nintendo sells 600k Wii’s

If you heard a whooshing sound at all last week, it could have been a number of things.

It could have been Wii consoles flying off the shelves of your local retailers; it could have been Nintendo’s Scrooge McDuck-like vault filling up with cash; or it could have been the special Wii and DS consoles set up at Nintendo of Japan in Kyoto as they feverishly printed money for Iwata and Miyamoto as they lit up cigars with 10,000 yen notes that typically just lie around the office these days. Or, it could have been a combination of all three that you heard, given the fact that Nintendo sold (not shipped) 600,000 consoles in the week following its November 19 launch. Zelda: Twilight Princess sold a healthy 454,000 copies.

And signs point to the fact that demand has not waned, if my ill-fated jaunt to the Natick Toys R Us for a $35 Game Boy Micro on Black Friday (at 4:15 a.m.) were any indication. While I was there not getting the deal of a lifetime on this all but forgotten portable (it sold out in 15 seconds), people of all stripes tussled and fought for Wii consoles while the empty display boxes of consoles of a different ilk sat idly by like a melancholy cadre of discarded Tiny Tims. Being the keen eyed observer that I am, I deftly avoided the fray and snagged a copy of Excite Truck.