So Eurogamer has a report up with the early sales data from Japan which says Nintendo sold 371,936 Wiis. Combined with earlier reports that they've sold more than 600,000 in North America, they're sure to break their first million with the additional shipments to the US since launch day.

When you also consider that the data from the Australian isn't in and that the European launch is forth coming (December 8th), it's not unrealistic that Nintendo will have a good holiday.

European ship numbers though are expected to be tight according to reports from early last month of sites and stores unsure as to if they'd be able to fill the pre-orders they'd already taken.

Now, figure that between North America and Japan that a bit over a million units have been sold. That means essentially between Europe, Australia and additional units being available in the North America and Japan that Nintendo has roughly 3 million units to go to meet the four million unit sold projection by the end of the year.

While I have my doubts as if to they can reach the four million milestone. I'd say they'll probably get close (probably within about half a million).

Microsoft had sold six million XBox 360s by September 30th and had projected to sell another four million in the three remaining months. This seams pretty unrealistic now. Next-Gen ran an article that had numbers from Arcadia Investments that put the XBox 360 at having sold more than 500,000 units in November (with 200,000 going on black friday week alone). But, this means that Microsoft would need to clear around three and a half million units between October and December which seems very unlikely. And to those who might argue that projections change, Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell told Next-Gen that they were still on track to meet the ten million projection, which Microsoft's Peter Moore re-affirmed today and agreed with the notion that they might even exceed the ten million mark. Seems mighty unlikely.

And then there's Sony... Sony sold a little over 80,000 Playstation 3s in Japan combined 125,000 to 175,000 they shipped to North America (less the 15,000 of those that were for kiosks) puts them quite a bit away from their target mark. There were supposed to be 400,000 units from North America and not making that number has made things that much more difficult.

In August, they projected four million, then it was two million, then as little as about two weeks ago, the projection was lowered to one million units. Now with only around 200,000 units out in the wild, selling a million by years end seems to be a pipe dream.

Had they hit the 400,000 ship number for North America, they might have met this projection, but with around 800,000 left to produce, ship, and sell in about 25 days seems impossible.

So, lets see what we've got here. Nintendo is pretty much on target, but probably gonna run a little short, Microsoft who apparently believes that making bold claims will sell units, and Sony who apparently has trouble counting how many units they're going to actually ship.

Who is going to make their ship numbers? Are the attachment rate of games to consoles be more important? Why does Europe keeps getting screwed in terms of system launches?

I don't know if this source is reliable, but you can see the sales numbers for each console here.

I'd feel much better about their site if they were upfront about where they were getting their data.

Market research by NPD Group shows Sony missed its U.S. November launch month PlayStation 3 sales target by more than half at 197,000 units, versus 400,000. An analyst cited supply constraints and commented, "There's no way that Sony will make its forecast for 1 million units in the U.S. this calendar year." Sony plans to sell 2m units worldwide by the end of '06, compared to Microsoft's Xbox 360 at 10m and Nintendo's Wii at 4m, with the latter two saying they may exceed original '06 estimates. In the U.S. in Nov., NPD estimates sales at 511,000 for the Xbox 360 and 476,000 for the Wii. Note on Nov. 27, Nintendo said it sold 600,000+ Wii's in the first eight days following its launch "in the Americas." Enterbrain, a Japanese gaming magazine, estimates 372,000 Wii's were sold in the first two days of its Japan launch. The Wii launches in Europe today. Reuters reports Microsoft's CFO said the Xbox 360 has out-shipped its predecessor by more than 1m units in its first three quarters post-launch, at 5.7m units. • Sources: Bloomberg, News.com-Reuters, Nintendo press release,

NPD is also reporting that video games sales saw a significant increase during the month of November. Game sales amounted to nearly $804 million, which is a 15% increase from last year. Sales were led by Xbox 360’s “Gears Of War,” Square Enix’s “Final Fantasy XII,” and Nintendo’s “Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess.” Portable game sales also saw a significant 28% increase over November.