A number of Wii software have also been selling for a long time from their launches. Among them, Wii Fit that launched in Japan at the end of last year, and in the U.S. and in Europe spring of this year, has been showing extraordinary momentum.

The Japanese sales of Wii Fit are about to reach and exceed 3 million at the end of this year. As the U.S. and Europe have more depths in their markets, we have a feeling today that the eventual sales of Wii Fit there may far exceed that of Japan, similar to how Nintendogs has been selling. This graph shows an almost continuously straight increase of the cumulative sales of Wii Fit, but it is because almost all the units we could ship every week have been immediately sold through. In other words, how much Wii Balance Board we can produce has been limiting the number of the eventual sales on the market. The cumulative global shipment units of Wii Fit reached 8.76 million at the end of September this year, and the number is sure to reach well over 10 million by the end of this year.

I heard from Reggie Fils-aime, who is the president of Nintendo of America, that lately, a couple dozens people are waiting in front of the Nintendo World Store in New York every morning in order to purchase a Wii Fit as soon as the store opens everyday. One out of three or four of them are allegedly purchasing Wii hardware too. On average, more than 100,000 Wii Fit has been constantly sold every week, and last week, about 150,000 Wii Fit was sold in the U.S. So far, we have been able to sell through all the Wii Fit we could ship to the market, and much like the way Wii Sports has been driving Wii hardware sales, nowadays, Wii Fit appears to also be playing a major role in driving the hardware sales. The U.S. appears to be the market which has most effectively leveraged the software launches of Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit in the three consecutive months of March, April and May this year.

I have spoken many times about how Wii has been the world's fastest platform to penetrate the market, but today I'd like to speak on this from a software perspective.

This graph has taken the latest generation platforms' cumulative software unit sales since their respective launch.

Since Xbox 360 has a year lead, they have more data than what is shown here, but please understand that I will only be comparing the same time period since launch.

Following Wii's November 2006 launch, Wii's software market has rapidly expanded at the end of last year with the 2nd holiday season. It has again increased its speed of penetration into the market during March through May of this year with the launches of the 3 titles that bears the tasks of increasing ownership of the Wii hardware: Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, and Wii Fit.

As you can see, Wii not only has the fastest ship-to-sell-through speed in the market, it is also the platform with a very fast software sales rate.

However, it appears that there is a general assumption that Nintendo's first party software are the only ones that are successful on the Wii platform and that success rate for the third party business is small.

I think this is a false impression that in particular is strong in Japan. I showed data to counter this argument when we had our annual financial results briefing this spring. Even afterwards, and even in the overseas markets where third party software are selling even better, many still appear to be fixated with such a notion.

We held an analysts event at E3 this past July in Los Angeles, where Nintendo of America's President Reggie presented this relevant data. Today, I'd like to share the updated data.

Please look at this. Initially, few people in this industry anticipate‚„ how Wii would generate such a market like today, and software developers in general were betting on other platforms. As a result, when we look at Wii's first year on the market, Wii hardware as well as Nintendo's first party Wii titles were selling well, but it was not the case for the third party software in general. However, around the time a year passed since the launch of Wii, successful third party software titles started to emerge, and sales has smoothly transitioned, which can be observed from this graph. In the past, many used to have a preconceived notion that multi-platform titles cannot expect great sales on Nintendo platforms and that third party software titles would have a hard time increasing sales figures on Nintendo platforms. However, with the emergence of many software that defied these bias appearing on the market, it has become increasingly clear that they were nothing but ungrounded assumptions. When we look only at first party software...

It looks like this. The very unique nature of Wii can be observed. As you all know, in the video game business, the chicken or the egg argument always take place for new platform penetration. Namely, third party software makers cannot see the lucrative market unless the hardware has shown significant penetrations into the market but the hardware cannot sell unless there are enough attractive software available. The platforms that struggle on the market are the ones which could not cope with this chicken or egg issue. Nintendo too had a hard time with GameCube, not being able to overcome this issue. Nintendo believes that the biggest role the first party titles have to play during the first two years since the launch of a new hardware must be to drive hardware sales and immediately create an attractive market for software makers. In case of Wii, we were blessed with the great luck of being able to launch several long-selling success titles, and were able to create good momentum. If success titles failed to become long-time sellers, it could have had some momentum in the market place for a while, but we would have needed additional hit titles immediately. As Nintendo and partner corporations have limited human resources, it is not possible to produce so many software one after another. When Nintendo needed to depend upon its first party titles in order to establish the market, we had to take advantages of Nintendo's strengths in various aspects, and I think that we were fortunate enough to maximize our efforts.

Why don't we see figures from another angle.

As for DS titles whose global cumulative shipment reached one million, there were 29 Nintendo first party titles including Pokémon and 28 third party titles as of the end of March 2008. As of the end of September 2008, one million-seller title was added to the first party tally to bring the total to 30 first party software, and eleven titles were added to the third party million-seller list to make the total number 39. The number of third party million-seller titles has now exceeded that of first party.

As for Wii software titles whose global cumulative shipment reached one million, there were 14 Nintendo first party titles including Pokémon and 12 third party titles as of the end of March 2008. As of the end of September 2008, one million-seller title was added to the first party tally to bring the total to 15 first party software, and nine titles were added to the third party million-seller list to make the total number 21. The number of third party million-seller titles for Wii also has exceeded that of the first party when we look at the global shipment numbers.
From these global numbers, it can be said that such notion that only Nintendo's first party titles sell on Nintendo platforms and third party software do not sell well are not true at all.

I spoke about the situation in the overseas market so far, and I'd like to spend some time talking about the domestic landscape. As you know, the gaming population expansion first took place in Japan, followed by Europe and the U.S. Because of this, ...

I feel some are thinking that what has taken place in Japan becomes the future indicator for overseas markets.
Since fall of last year, DS sales pace has become stabilized in Japan. And since the spring of this year, while Wii sales in the U.S. and in Europe have been accelerating, Wii in Japan has not been showing similar momentum. If such a hypothesis is true, some may be concerned that the sales of DS and Wii may slow down in overseas market next year.