New worldwide Wii and DS total sales

With a brand new Nintendo money report comes a brand new worldwide Wii and DS sales total.

As of 31st December 2010, the DS (DS, DSi, DSi XL) has sold 144.59 million units, globally, and the Wii 84.64 million units.

Massive numbers. Can 3DS replicate them?

Nintendo's got a modest outlook at the moment: by the end of March, the Mario maker expects four million 3DS sales (and 15 million game sales).

Quick 3DS release date recap: 25th March in Europe; 27th March in the US; and 26th February in Japan.

And Nintendo sorely needs a boost; a lot less profit has been made this year (in the nine months ending 31st December 2010) than last - 74 per cent less. In numbers terms, that's a $9.8 billion total take whittled down to $603 million after expenditure and Shigeru Miyamoto's pocket money has been taken out.

Nintendo blamed currency conversion rates - apparently a cool $1 billion was thrown away.

Truth is, Nintendo made lots less money: in 2009 the total take for those nine months was $14.4 billion.

But it's far from doom and gloom. The Wii and DS still lead this generation of hardware year in, year out. During those nine months, DS sold 15.7 million units around the world and Wii 13.72 million. That's not to mention that Nintendo has been selling Wii at a profit ever since launch.

Nintendo picked out "strong sales" of Super Mario Galaxy 2, Wii Party, Donkey Kong Country Returns and New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Christmas-time sales were "robust", "especially in Europe and the United States", but weren't as good as the year before.

Because of the results, Nintendo has dropped slightly how many units Wii and DS are expected to sell by the end of March. But only by roughly one million less units apiece - bringing the DS total for the year to 18.5 million units and Wii to 16 million units.