On Thursday, the marketing research company NPD Group stated that over 2 million Wii game consoles were sold in November. This is two times higher than last year’s November and very surprising, as a spike in gaming console sales only occurs prior to the Christmas holidays. Also, it seems that the 4 year-old Nintendo sold 1 million and a half of its DS portable gaming device. The sales figures look even more impressive, considering the economic recession that has hit everybody’s pockets.

Yet, the game industry seems to be going well because, according to NPD reports, it recorded a 10% increase compared to last November and, as an NPD analyst predicts, it is expected to hit the $22 billion mark in overall sales at the end of this year.

Wii is also close to become the most popular game console in terms of sales. Analyst Michael Patcher of Wedbush Morgan Securities stated that Wii will pass the 8.2 million mark that PlayStation 2 had back in 2002. The analyst also said that this year could also be the best for Nintendo’s console, if the company manages to sell 400,000 more units in December.

According to the online auction website eBay, Nintendo Wii was the most searched for game console on Black Friday. eBay totaled an amount of $45 million in the last month and a half from selling 125,211 units of Nintendo’s console.

The outstanding sale increase is justified by the fact that the Wii was a somehow different console. Nintendo has never wanted to impress with high-definition graphics, the core-gamer’s ultimate dream, because they knew that they couldn’t beat PlayStation 3’s impressive hardware and its Blu-Ray capabilities. Therefore, they focused solely on the user’s experience with the game by creating the motion-sensor controller which revolutionized the way people play games. The magic of the WiiMote not only attracted average people, but also a consistent fraction of the intensive gamers. Nintendo had made a bet and won it. The company proved that it’s not the latest physics algorithms implemented in games that matter, but the way people can have fun in a simple and intuitive way.

Furthermore, at a $250 price tag, the Wii is a steal compared to the PS3 and cheaper than Microsoft Xbox. Besides, it’s also worth mentioning that a recent report from Black Friday pointed out that the sales of Nintendo Wii outdid the ones of Xbox and PlayStation3 combined.

Even the staff at Nintendo is impressed by how well the Wii managed to perform in units sold, as executive vice president of sales and marketing at Nintendo America, Cammie Dunaway, stated that "everything about the Wii is unprecedented." She also pointed out once more that the Wii targets families which seek simple, cheap and intuitive ways to have fun together.