Nintendo gains continue to accelerate

NPD released its North American sales data for the month of April. Nintendo sold 714k units, a 1% decline from the prior month's 721k. With xbox and PS3 having the added fuel of Grand Theft Auto IV's release to drive console sales, their share fell significantly, dropping roughly 27% m/m to 188k and 187k respectively. Nintendo is outselling their combined efforts almost 2:1.

This month, the Nintendo Wii Fit ships. It's a $90 aerobic pad with an exercise software program. I see a lot of gameplay possibilities for it going forward as it's going to make sports games even more entertaining by adding foot controls in future software titles. It's been massively pre-sold and most retailers aren't even taking orders for it anymore as demand is so far ahead of supply.

Nintendo continues to reinvent the home gaming category by it's intuitive interface design that has opened the previous geekdom of video games to the mainstream. This is the same thing that Apple did with the iPod, took a clunky and very techy experience (encoding music to a portable player) and made it a seamless and non-techy experience. It's revolutionary and it will secure Nintendo's position as the top dog this platform cycle.

They gave conservative guidance... they're going to be wrong. Expect Wii to continue to crush the competition and Nintendo to continue to rise. It's going to be up today but it's still a buy.