Almost a month after its release, Bungie Studio's Halo 3 has finally loosened its grip on the US sales charts, with Valve Corporation's Orange Box succeeding the widely successful game. For the week ending on October 13, The Orange Box (containing Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal) is the best seller on its first week of release.

For its opening week, The Orange Box's Xbox 360 version has sold 348,049 units and Halo 3, now on its third week, has sold 285,860 units. In third place is the popular The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for Nintendo DS handheld platform. In fourth is Final Fantasy Tactics: The Lion War for the PSP and in fifth is Wii Sports for the Wii.

It was only a matter of time for Halo 3 to lose the top spot, but it's unlikely the same could be said for its presence in Xbox Live, where it continues to dominate the charts after dethroning the previous champ, Gears of War.

Game industry sales tracking site VG Chartz reports that the Nintendo Wii game console has hit total lifetime sales of 10.57 million in the period ending August 23rd, surpassing Microsoft's Xbox 360 to take first place in this generation's console war.

VG Chartz says that its figures come from samples drawn from consumers worldwide, and not retailers, meaning that there may have been more Xbox 360s shipped, but more Wiis have been sold.

The Wii launched a year after the Xbox 360, but saw rapid sales in every market it has been distributed in. Since its launch late last year, it has outpaced its rivals in monthly market performance.

VG Chartz says that very few analysts would have even conceived of this development happening a couple of years back, but Nintendo proved all its critics wrong with innovative controls and casual games that expanded the market.

The last time Nintendo led the market was in the early to mid-90s during the heyday of its SNES system. It saw tough times with last generation's GameCube but rebounded strongly with the Wii.

The Wii has breached another milestone, its sales soaring over 10 million consoles. By the writing of this article the Wii holds 41.2% share of the market.

 

Despite heavy support from Japan where sales are up to 3.32 million, it's still sold the most in America with 4.07 million consoles. The Xbox 360 is still strong, selling 6.64 million consoles in a America alone, and with total worldwide sales of 10.32 million consoles.

With the way things are going for the Wii though, we may see a turnover soon. A month ago the Wii was a million behind the Xbox 360; today, it is now only about 220,000 behind. The Xbox 360 currently holds 42.1% of the marketshare. However, should rumors prove true about the Xbox 360 price drop this month (and signs point to yes,) we may see spikes in the market.

Things just keep looking up for the Wii. By most recent count in VG Chartz, it's been found that the Wii has sold the most consoles than any other in its first eight months making it the fastest selling console in history. That includes handhelds.

Even after a recent prediction that they may not have enough consoles to satisfy consumer demand this holiday season, the Wii seems to be selling like hotcakes. It seems they are justified in deciding to increase their sales forecast to 16.5 million units for the year.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata's prediction that the Wii may very well break the PS2 record seems to be coming true. Its success also had EA consider more focus on it recently.

Wii sales is catching up to the Xbox 360's and fast. By July 15 Wii sales, amounting to about 9.5 million, are only about half a million behind the 360.

Here's the latest on sales of hardware and games for the weeks ending on July 7 and 14. July 14, it has to be noted, is just a day after E3.

 

Recent data gives light to Sony's claim of a doubling in their sales since their US$ 100 price drop. For the sales week ending on July 14 at least, sales for the PlayStation 3 rose 131%, more than double, outrunning the sales of the 360. The Wii rose by 10% but the Xbox hardly moved, selling only 1% more than the previous week.

The Nintendo DS is enjoying a ginormous success; although sales slipped by 5%, you can hardly scoff at more than 97k units sold in a week. The PSP sold only 50k on the same week.

It also looks like the top 5 games in Amazon last July 8 seems to be just as popular to non-online shoppers. The most popular games for each console is Wii Play for the Wii, The Darkness for the Xbox 360, and Ninja Gaiden Sigma for the PS3. Still going strong for the Wii are Mario Party 8 and Resident Evil 4. Slipping into the 360's favor is Transformers, while Gears of War is almost out of the top 10 in 9th place. Transformers also made it to PS3's top 3, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas is still popular in second place.

Of the total of 11,878,996 units of next gen consoles that have been sold in America, 55% of those are Xbox 360 units, 31.3% are Wii, and the PS3 accounts for 13.7%. Also, if the PS3 continues to sell more than the 360, and if the Wii continues its current pace, the 360 will be in for some tough times.

For a detailed list of the sales for the week of July 7 and 14, you may click our Read link below.

 

It's official: there is no stopping Nintendo's momentum. As if it was just yesterday since the Wii reached 8 million, Ninty's product of innovation and waving sticks have finally arrived at the 9 million milestone - just a million away from Xbox 360.

Looking at the numbers VG Chartz had more than a month back, the Wii sold almost a million units since early June. The PlayStation 3 had a solid month and sold more than the 360, but both pale in comparison to Wii's performance.

On the handhelds side, the DS continues to dominate with almost 45 million units sold. Sony's PSP, while behind by a huge margin, still experience healthy sales as it got past the 22 million mark.

Let's not beat around the bush, here's what VG Chartz gathered:

Xbox 360: 10.08m (0.41m Japan 6.50m America 3.16m Others)   
Wii: 9.05m (2.98m Japan, 3.64m America, 2.42m Others)
PS3: 3.69m (1.00m Japan, 1.58m America, 1.11m Others)

DS: 44.97m (18.14m Japan, 13.11m America, 13.72m Others)
PSP: 22.15m (5.75m Japan, 8.63m America, 7.78m Others)

 

Hot in the news is the estimated worldwide sales numbers for Nintendo's new-gen console, which just hit a mark less than two million to the Xbox 360's current sales count. The Wii is now just 1.28 million units shy of taking the lead in the hardware base establishment race, reports VG Chartz, a source for worldwide console sales.

And what's more, third-party onlookers note that if this month's sales continue in similar numbers, the Wii could well zoom over all the high-powered next-gen consoles in eight to nine weeks or late August 2007. If rendered true, the Wii will have swatted all console race analysts' predictions to date. The Nintendo DS still outruns the PlayStation Portable, while the PlayStation 3 is slowly making its way up in its ten-year marathon.

However, numbers in Nexgen Wars have different estimates for the worldwide sales for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii. So it would appear that nothing is etched in stone until the three console companies come forward with their quarterly sales numbers, hopefully at the same time they release their Q3 2007 financial performance reports.

Consoles (numbers in millions):

Xbox 360 - Worldwide: 10.13; Japan: 0.41; America: 6:47; Others: 3.25
PlayStation 3 - Worldwide: 3.61; Japan: 0.98 ; America: 1.56; Others: 1.07
Wii - Worldwide: 8.85; Japan: 2.91; America: 3.57; Others: 2.37

Handhelds (numbers in millions):

DS - Worldwide: 45.36; Japan: 18.01; America: 13.03; Others: 14.32
PSP - Worldwide: 22.34; Japan: 5.71; America: 8.58; Others: 8.05

While Shigeru Miyamoto will be discussing Nintendo's future over at the GDC, a recent poll has shown the sort of success their Wii console has enjoyed since its initial launch. VG Charts indicates that as of late, the Wii has sold approximately 5.20 million units worldwide, with the bulk of these sales occurring in North America.

 

And while the Xbox 360 still holds a near-double 9.36 million in sales, keep in mind that the 360's been in circulation since 2005, with the Wii out in the market only as recently as November (US) and December (in Japan) last 2006.

In a span of roughly 3 to 4 months, the Wii is already at a more than half the 360's total sales in two years - only time will tell if it Nintendo can keep up this scorching pace.

The Wii's gaming line-up is also experiencing similar success, with the game sales charts dominated by Wii titles like Fire Emblem: Goddess of Dawn for Japan, and Wii Sports for the US.

Well, it looks like the DS and the Wii really does print money. VG Charts have posted a list of the top ten Wii titles for Japan and US.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess takes the top spot for US sales as it rakes in a total of 1,030,750 copies. No surprise there really. Next comes Red Steel lagging at 257,750 copies and Rayman Raving Rabbids with 215,750. Japanese sales are a different story with Wii Sports commanding first place with 935,000 sales. Wii Play is not so far on second place with 822,500 copies, while Twilight Princess takes third with a measly (compared to the others) 386,250 copies.

Here's the complete list:

America

• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Nintendo)
• Red Steel (Ubisoft)
• Rayman Raving Rabbids (Ubisoft)
• Madden NFL 07 (Electronic Arts)
• Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz (Sega)
• Call of Duty 3 (Activision)
• Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (Activision)
• Excite Truck (Nintendo)
• Trauma Center: Second Opinion (Atlus)
• Dragonball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 (Atari)
  

Japan

• Wii Sports (Nintendo)
• Wii Play (Nintendo)
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Nintendo)
• Wario Ware: Smooth Moves (Nintendo)
• Pokemon Battle Revolution (Nintendo)
• Dragonball Z Sparking NEO (Bandai)
• Ennichi No Tatsujin (Namco)
• Bleach (Sega)
• Super Swing Golf Pangya (Tecmo)
• Elebits (Konami)

This report is going to be short and sweet. VG Charts reported that Zelda: Twilight Princesshas already broken the two million mark. With that mentioned, it is safe to say that there are a couple of million people out there who's trying to enjoy and complete the game.

Now, to help you out with your quest of completing it, O.Jennings brings to us The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess complete calculator.

No, this one won't compute a price cut offer or something like that. By answering a few questions about what have you accomplished in the game, this nifty website will be able tell you how many percent of Twilight Princess have you completed.

Pretty useful for Link fans who want to keep track of their progress or for players who are just plain-curious. To know just how much have you completed in Zelda: Twilight Princess, our Read link below will take you to the site.