Nintendo of America boss predicts 1m Wii sales by early December

NoA president Reggie Fils-Aime has revealed he expects the company to sell one million Wii consoles to North American consumers within the next two to three weeks.

Speaking to Reuters, Fils-Aime predicted that Nintendo will hit the target by early December, and go on to sell another million Wii units by the second week of January. He said that a life span of between four and six years for the console would be "just about right".

Fils-Aime also took the opportunity to echo comments made by other Nintendo execs regarding the profit potential of the Wii, compared to other consoles such as the PS3, which apparently cost more to produce than to buy.

"We think that's in part why the industry has become so insular - very expensive machines, machines that arguably do more than you need them to do," Fils-Aime said.

"We designed [Wii] from the get-go to be profitable, so it will be past this weekend and throughout its entire life. Because we're a gaming company, we have to be profitable in the gaming business. It's not like our competitors who can make profit in operating systems or TVs to offset their losses on the gaming side."

Nintendo recently announced that a DVD playback-enabled version of the Wii will hit Japanese shelves next year - but following the latest comments from Fils-Aime, it's looking increasingly unlikely that the new model will get a North American release.

"We took a pause to say, 'We're not going to do high definition. We're not going to include a DVD because consumers already have two or three different DVD playback machines in their household," Fils-Aime said. "We wanted to bring it back to a core gaming machine."