Nintendo May Have 18 Million Wiis by End of Year

Judging by the news this week that Nintendo's income was up 102% over a year ago, it's safe to say that the Wii has been a tremendous help to the company since it launched November 19, 2006. Selling over 3 million units in just a matter of weeks, Nintendo said they expect to ship a total of six million units by the end of March 2007, and a full 7 million systems manufactured by that time. According to GamePro.com, they are about to get any even bigger boost that would put the system on track to outperform both the company's popular Nintendo DS and its next-gen rival Xbox 360 in first year sales:

"Nintendo says it's increasing production capacity to over a million Wii consoles per month. At such a pace, by the end of this year, over 18 million consoles would be produced. To give scale to such a figure, the Nintendo Gamecube sold 22 million units over the course of six years. Clearly, Nintendo's aggressive pacing shows they expect better success with their latest console,"