CES: Nintendo Announces Holiday Sales Figures
Nintendo is riding high after the Christmas shopping season it just had. In fact, the NES sales have surpassed even what they were hoping for, which is one reason why so many stores were sold out close to Christmas day. Nintendo is working hard to replenish inventory to retailers across the nation.
To put the NES sales in perspective, during its test launch of the system in New York in 1985 Nintendo managed to sell approximately 100,000 Deluxe Sets. From January through August it sold another 110,000 systems. By the end of August Nintendo was finally nationwide and its marketing campaign began in earnest, spending over 2 million dollars on commercials.
That advertising did its job, because from September through the end of December Nintendo sold through another 900,000 systems – comprised of Control Decks and Deluxe Sets. That’s a massive success for the company and an encouraging sign that video games are back from the dead. It also means that Nintendo now has over 1 million machines installed in American homes, which should be enticing enough for more companies to want to create games for the NES.
Nintendo is going to continue its aggressive marketing campaign for 1987. Many of its new games will receive their own commercial spots and Nintendo is going to reach out to its customer base with a new newsletter. A Nintendo representative said to expect it to ship in the next couple of months to those that registered their NES with Nintendo’s warranty card. We will be sure to keep you updated on this as well, but in the meantime make sure to fill yours out!
Craig has been covering the video game industry since 1995. His work has been published across a wide spectrum of media sites. He’s currently the Editor-In-Chief of Nintendo Times and contributes to Gaming Age.
