Not entirely surprising, Nintendo’s latest console sold out in a couple of hours in Japan according to Joystiq. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun paper via Forbes stated that an estimated 400.000 Wiis were sold on the first day. At this point 1 out of every 317 Japanese citizens owns a Wii.

Even though these numbers might not be entirely accurate, this would put global Wii sales at a whopping million units already, more than the Playstation 3 which came out earlier but is twice as expensive. Tomorrow the Wii will be unleashed upon Europe which will add a pretty large number to the total as well. Unfortunately Nintendo hasn’t disclosed any of those numbers, but judging from previous generations and competitors Europe is getting the less units than the US.

If accurate, this would put reported Wii sales at around 1 million units between the US and Japanese launches (600,000 in the US plus 400,000 in Japan). It should be interesting to see if subsequent weekly sales and upcoming worldwide launches can help Nintendo make up the three quarter difference in hitting their 4 million target by year’s end.

In the Netherlands something went wrong with the launch of the Wii. Several shops started selling consoles today, which is before the official launch date December 8th even though Nintendo forbid this. When Nintendo got hold of this news, they spread the word to other shops that it was ‘ok ‘to start selling the consoles because shops who kept their promise should not get screwed because of other people’s mistakes. This is pissing many people off, including me because this means lots of stores are already out of Wiis tomorrow and people who didn’t pre-order only have a very small chance of getting one. According to Ownage, Nintendo Benelux said that this issue doesn’t cause any damage for them but it would’ve been nicer if all the shops started selling the day they were supposed to.