New Super Mario Bros. Wii usage stats and first week sales @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on November 24, 2009

News: Mario's latest game is selling well and being played a lot.

Nintendo has performed their weekly update of the Wii's Nintendo Channel and with it we get our first look at the usage statistics of New Super Mario Bros. Wii. While more or less a novelty after only a week of sales, these stats show that Nintendo President Reggie Fils-Aime's prediction that the game would outsell Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on a single platform has quite a ways to go before it comes true.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii has been played by Nintendo Channel users for 82,335 hours since its release on November 15. Each Nintendo Channel user who has the game has loaded it an average of 2.43 times and played for an average of 6 hours and ten minutes. A little quick math reveals that 13,359 Nintendo Channel users have played New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Using Wii Sports as a baseline (because it's pretty safe to say that every Wii owner has played Wii Sports at least once), 2,803,758 people provide usage statistics to the Nintendo Channel. So currently, New Super Mario Bros. Wii has been played by roughly half a percent of all Nintendo Channel users.

However, the usage statistics of the small percentage of Wii owners that use the Nintendo Channel may not tell the whole story. A preliminary sales report from VGChartz has revealed that New Super Mario Bros. Wii sold 1.3 million copies worldwide during its first week of release with 900,000 of those sales coming from North America.

Official numbers from Nintendo have yet to be released, but it appears that the race is on.