INTERVIEW-UPDATE 1-Nintendo Wii, DS sales strong despite economy
* says sales resilient to economic slowdown
* Wii sales more than double in U.S. in Thanskgiving week
* shares close up 4.9 pct ahead of interview
(Updates with additional comments, details)
KYOTO, Japan, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Nintendo Co Ltd (7974.OS) said sales of its Wii game console more than doubled during the Thanksgiving holiday week in the United States, defying the sweeping retail gloom in the wake of a global economic crisis.
President Satoru Iwata's comments come as a rare bright spot at a time when companies around the world are cutting production and lowering their outlooks amid the global downturn.
Iwata told Reuters in an interview that Wii sales more than doubled to about 800,000 units during the Thanksgiving holiday week in the United States, from 350,000 units a year ago.
"When the economy is strong, people tend to buy three things from the top of their wish list. But when things are bad, people often buy only the first thing on their list," Iwata said on Monday. "Fortunately for us a lot of shoppers put our products at the top of their list."
Iwata said sales of its DS handheld game player were up about 20 percent during the Thanksgiving holiday week compared with a year earlier and its European Wii sales so far in this holiday season have far outstripped last year.
"We are shooting for quite big numbers as our annual (unit) sales targets. But we are not in a situation where it is getting difficult to hit that target or our plans are getting off track," Iwata said.
Nintendo, locked in a three-way battle with Sony Corp (6758.T) and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) in the global video game industry, aims to sell 27.5 million units of the Wii in the year to end-March, up 48 percent from a year earlier.
Since taking the helm in 2002, Iwata has been focusing on expanding the overall gaming population by launching user-friendly game machines and innovating software such as Nintendogs and Wii Fit, rather than competing head-on with Sony and Microsoft in enhancing the speed and power of game consoles.
That strategy has paid off handsomely as the Wii is outselling Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 by a large margin, allowing Nintendo to forecast an operating profit more than three times as big as Sony's.
"When similar products are on store shelves, price competition is inevitable. Nintendo has been trying to steer clear of that direction and create a market of our own," Iwata said.
(Editing by Jean Yoon)
((kiyoshi.takenaka@thomsonreuters.com; +81 3 6441 1810; Reuters Messaging: kiyoshi.takenaka.reuters.com@reuters.net)) Keywords: NINTENDO/
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