Good on you Reg, for using Metric units of measure.

I hate the fact that for the last 2 Xmas's the Wii's have been as rare as rocking horse shit!! And those that you could get were stupidly overpriced...

Well... just in case you can't find one at a "normal" price, here's a helpful tip! Head over to eBuyer.com, they're normal price at £176ish (unlike Amazon who tried to flog me one at £239 couple of days ago), and they've got chuffin hundreds!! (12 Dec, 9:30 pm)

Ordered mine Wednesday, free delivery, and it was dropped off today. Prolly would have been sooner too if I'd not ordered it at 9:30 pm lol!

You can't censor the first part of 'metric ****load'. It's essential to the unit - You wouldn't say that someone bought five ****meters of Cat5 cable!

So, for reference, the 'load' sequence*:

buttload

assload

shitload

fuckload

You can also have other prefixes than 'metric' as a further modifier:

metric buttload

ever-loving shitload

unholy fuckload

You should also be aware of the final, ultimate descriptor. I will be impressed when Nintendo sells an:

ever-loving fuckton.

There, see? That was easy.

*It should be noted that 'cuntload' and 'twatload' are highly inappropriate and should never be used.

At a rate of $5 mil per television, 2 million of these dangerous consoles will cause $10^13 worth of damage!

I work in retail.

We got 20 Wiis in at 1 PM yesterday.

They were gone by 5:30 PM.

Meantime, the 'special edition' PS3's we got in for Thanksgiving are STILL there.

I can well believe the 2 million mark on Wiis, if you spread out my little store's situation all across the country....

I confess that I have helped with the sales figure as I have just bought a Wii for Christmas. As it happens I got one through play.com using topcashback.co.uk to eke out the pennies a bit further. They seem to have plenty stock at the moment and at £169.99 including free delivery it looked like a fair price.

Didn't really consider either the PS3 or Xbox as it's a whole family present and with young kids the Wii just seems more appropriate. The graphics might be far inferior but I don't need detailed images of people being killed and maimed I just want some silly fun for 8-14 year olds.

And why do I feel complelled to point this out, when clearly the only problem is it's Friday and your caption proofreader probably just snuck out of the office a bit early?

Nintendo sold shedloads (non metric) to non gamer households, 360 sold quite a few to gamers and PS3 sold a few to confused punters looking for a Blu-Ray player.

This is news ?

You realize that this is also good news from a CO2 / energy point of view. As a Wii I believe pulls about 18 Watts which is a lot less than a PS3 (199W) or XBox (186W). So thank you all for buying your Wii and reducing your carbon foot print - now if you could just get a smaller Telly!

Hang on, your units are all messed up! As any fule knows; the correct units for volume are:

# Walnut = 0.16gf

# Chicken's egg = 0.35gf

# Bulgarian airbag (C-cup Posh Spice - allegedly) = 1.1gf

# Bulgarian funbag (DD-cup Jordan) = 3.27gf

# Football = 11.07gf

# Olympic-sized swimming pool = 4,780,114gf

# Known universe

(As defined in http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/24/vulture_central_standards/). Can we have an update with correct units?

So we should be using the Imperial Fuckton.

Or is that now depracated.

I think Sony are going to go bust the same way the N64 went. There not selling enough PS3 they really need to reduce the price of the PS3 and fast.I have 3 PS3's they are really good but the price is too high £199.99p is a good price they could make there money back on the games is where the money is now theses days.This is how the PS2 took the market by storm good price of PS1 and PS2 good game titles.

Tap into the hardcore gaming market and you can expect to sell a few hundred thousand consoles.

Tap into the home entertainment market and you can expect to shift millions.

Now, does anyone know the best place to track down a Wii Fit ?

I'm amazed that the Wii is still selling the amounts it is. After 2 years I thought everyone who wanted one would already own one.

When will Microsoft release a handheld games console?

"ever-loving fuckton."

this is probably the best unit of sales volume ever... well done that man. give yourself a knighthood.

Almighty FSM, PLEASE spare me from comments like that.

If you're so fecking smart, why do you read El Reg at all? Why do you spend all that energy looking for a story that your fifth grade brain can comprehend and then post some retarded comment stating how easy it was for your obviously superior brain to have already figured these FACTS out?

Why can't you people just learn to shrug and move on?

Oh, and I had SO MUCH figured out you would post that comment. Was that supposed to be a comment?

Yup, I hear ya on that one.

I've been mulling over getting an XBOX360 this year (already have a Wii). I wouldn't consider the PS3 at the moment, it's just too expensive.

Sure I want to get into Blu-ray so I no doubt will eventually buy a PS3 in the next 18 months or so but to be honest at the moment the £99 Bush Blu-ray player at Argos is looking much better (that's if I don't get an XBOX 360).

Now if Sony were to drop the PS3 price to £200 then I'd buy one tomorrow.

Paris - because I saw her on a magazine called "More Inteligent Life" today in Tescos - you can see for yourself here: http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/

Rob

Bought a PS3, and it was rubbish. It was a nice unit, and a great upscaling DVD player. Blu-Ray is meh, and really you cannot tell the difference between upscaled DVD and blu ray is you are sat at the right distance.

HD is utterly pointless for anything other than static or slow moving shots. Considering I enjoy action films there is NO point in me buying a the Blu-Ray version for twice the cost. You know why? Motion Blur. When you only have 24-25fps motion blur is needed to obtain a smooth picture. What is the point of having 1080 lines of blurred pixels compared to 525 of the same blurred pixels? If anything, I think Blu Ray looks worse... They need to start filming at around 300fps if you want HD action, but then no TV or Blu Ray player can handle that, so its pointless.

Oh, when I went on the lookout for games it reminded me of when I had my Amstrad CPC, hundreds of C64 and spectrum games. Poor ports (if they were out) and a mediorce collection tucked away in the loser section.

The Spectrum 48k is the Wii

The C64 is the XBOX 360

And the PS3 is the Amstrad CPC664

(Comes with everything out of the box... but at a cost...)

This clearly shows that the ps3 is crap. and the 360 is far betta.

The Wii, much as it might be sniffed at for being casual, is something new.

I have yet to see anything console exclusive come out that really makes me ache to drop the fuckload of cash on a proper 360 /ps3 (the base models cost the same as the wii, but the base models are for suckers).

the Wii brought with it an actually new gaming experience. If I want to play platformers, there are plenty out there for my xbox or ps2. If I want to play tony hawk, i can get it for my xbox or ps2.

only with the wii can I wave my arms around like a wiitard and watch my onscreen character slash his sword through bad guys. love it. when the three consoles were being teased three years ago I made up my mind that it was only the Wii for Mii. It was the only one that brought something new to the table.

If they would just figure out some !@#$ing way for me to download tracks for Rock Hero, now...

Also, minor nitpick to the article -- it lists the Microsoft XBox. Should specify the XBox 360. There is another console on there from the XBox's generation, so it can't simply be assumed.

I personally still find it hilarious that the ps2 is selling in a robust fashion. For one thing, who the hell does NOT already own one?

<Looks at all the Wiis in the various shops around Brissie>

What shortage? They sell rather well down here and the stores *always* have more in stock. Is someone creating an artificial shortage in the UK?

Am I the only one who didn't find it that expensive? For something I use daily, I mean.

I got it for £300 with MGS4 and GRID last year, and I use it all the time. Sure, I'm mostly playing multiplatform titles, but I'm enjoying them. Between that and the fact it upscales regular DVD's and plays Blu-Ray, I already feel like I've got £300 worth of use out of it.

I think Sony's problem is that they've never really had a clue what they're doing. They "Won" the last 2 generations by default because the competition sucked. They didn't have to do anything for devs to rush to the PS1 over the N64, or the PS2 over the gamecube. Now, between people rushing to shift cheap plastic Wii addons and MS finally using its financial muscle to score decent exclusives, Sony's only strong point is they they have the best hardware.

I do wonder how many 360 sales are people replacing out of warranty red-ringed consoles, or people who just don't wanna wait for MS to run repairs picking up the cheap arcade model. I know at least 2 people so addicted to live that the 2 week wait was too long for them, so they brought arcades to pass the time, then traded them in when their main 360's returned to them.

You raise some good points. The Reg's standards definition unfortunately did not include measures of weight http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/24/vulture_central_standards/

I think we're long overdue a standards update.

By my calculations, a Wii is around 2.76gf (not counting box, accessories or wii-mote fetish gear)

That's 1.72 million bulgarian funbags. Or, more usefully, 1.3 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

We do need standardisation from the Reg. We have a nice set of units, so use them!

What's the conversion factor between metric ****loads and imperial and/or US ****loads?

I think you could probably write exactly the same about the Wii Fit, rare as rocking horse shit at the moment.

I ended up setting an alert on Argos for when they cam back in stock and decided to pay the slightly higher price (xmas present for the wife), the slightly higher price didn't bother me too much as I will be rewarded for it ;)

...that Nintendo are the only ones who actually make a profit on the hardware sold too!

"I'm amazed that the Wii is still selling the amounts it is. After 2 years I thought everyone who wanted one would already own one."

SWMBO has one, and for this reason I decided to reserve judgement until I'd had a chance to play with hers (fnarr!) - whilst it's certainly an innovative design, which in turn has forced game developers to innovate as well, the whole thing is very meh ... Wii-Fit is fun (as it bloody well ought to be, given the grief I had to put up with until she managed to get one) but other than that it was a bit of a non-event for me. It depends on the market you're aiming at - our MD recently asked me which console she should buy for 'family' use and I recommended the Wii without hesitation

That said, I recently got myself a 360 - ostensibly to play Fable II but I've unearthed a whole raft other other games which appeal, plus Xbox Live is *far* better than it used to be back when I had an original Xbox - and have just bought a PS3 off a mate of mine for 175 quid which, IMO, is the sort of price point it should be at anyway, and if it tanks as a console then I've got myself another Linux box.

As for the unit of box shifting, I would suggest that the old 'imperial fuckton' be replaced with the 'metric shitload'. Conversion into other Reg units is left as an exercise for the reader :-)

"Is someone creating an artificial shortage in the UK?"

Erm, Nintendo?

Why aren't you out there saving the venerable Atari 2600? The mighty NES or even a SNES or Mega Drive?! I dunno, kids today!

For shame.

With pretty much everyone hoping they keep their job before christmas, and many knowing they most likely will be on the Dole soon, hardly anyone is making a big purchase.

Scared of buying big at this crazy, terrifying time, a super-cheap Xbox, or slightly more expensive, but oh-so-fashionable Wii, looks like the perfect christmas treat.

At least until our employers stop panicking and we feel safe enough to buy some premium stuff. Its not like Sony is in trouble here, the PS3 will be around for a long, long time.

Analogy is wrong

Wii is Commodore 64 – good enough to even defend against 16bit machines

Xbox – Spectrum 48k – innovative enough to sell loads, but nothing really special

PS3 – Atari 800 – Does everything, better than everybody else but too expensive

"Xbox – Spectrum 48k – innovative enough to sell loads, but nothing really special"

That'd make the Arcade 360 a bit like a 16k Speccy then :-)

I am a British GP. We had a 90 year old granny tell us earlier in the year that she had the best Christmas ever (2007) - she had been playing Golf, tennis, etc. My wife (and my GP partner) was a bit stumped by this, until the patient told her that she had been doing all these activities on the Wii.

And just over a week ago we had a patient in her 70s come in complaining of knee pain. When we asked what was causing it, she told us it occured when she was ski jumping! In fact, she was fine with all the other activities she was doing on the Wii Fit, but every time she did the ski jumping she got knee pain. We told her she should desist from ski jumping, but the patient looked very disappointed...

My dad got an Atari 800XL when I was 2 years old. I was brought up on a combination of Frogger, Pitfall II, Miner2049er and BASIC. Built my love of technology it did.

Oh, back to the subject. I've got an XBOX 360. It's quite good.

Well, I admit that I bought one too. The deal-maker for me, tho, was Animal Crossing: City Folk.

Furry = Very Yes.

Penguin. Because I had one in Animal Crossing: Wild World.

Those numbers are well off. the 199w for the PS3 was the original launch PS3. Since then, Sony have die shrunk the CPU and GPU to 65nm (45nm on the way soon!). Currently it's more like 110w max, 100w nominal.

The rest of the FUD in this article (which being a UK site, mysteriously seems to attract a strangely large number of US anti-PS3 posters - MS Paid Shills???), is not worth commenting on....