Nintendo on Monday said it had sold over six hundred thousand of its latest Wii game console in the Americas along with a substantial amount of games supporting the new device. The company claimed that Wii had instantly become a $190 million business in the Americas.

“Even with sales already in excess of 600 000 units, demand continues to exceed supply, as it’s clear this is one of the ‘gotta-have’ products for the holiday season. We’ve shipped retailers several times the amount of hardware the other company was able to deliver for its launch around the same time – and we still sold out,” said Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime.

Nintendo’s Wii game console was designed so that to be affordable, widely available, yet, provide to exciting game-play not only to the hardcore games, but also for those, who play occasionally. According to Nintendo, the new gaming system is succeeding in its stated mission of reinvigorating current players, while attracting new ones.

“Given the inclusive nature of Wii game play, we’re seeing this new form of video gaming is already a huge hit with gamers and newcomers alike. It continues to be a phenomenal launch,” Mr. Fils-Aime said.

Nintendo hopes to sell 2 million Wii game consoles in the Americas by the end of the year. By contrast, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. only targets to sell about 2 million of its next-generation PlayStation 3 game consoles in Japan and the U.S. by the end of 2006.

Every Wii system includes the five-game Wii Sports software that allows users to play using the motion-sensitive game controller, something not available previously.

Nintendo Wii console will feature IBM’s custom PowerPC architecture based microprocessor named Broadway clocked at 729MHz and code-named Hollywood chip with built-in graphics core, DSP and I/O features from ATI that will operate at 243MHz, earlier reports suggested. Nintendo Wii is expected to use 91MB of memory in total: 23MB of “main” 1T-SRAM, 64MB of “external” 1T-SRAM and 3MB texture buffer on the GPU. Nintendo’s Wii does not feature a hard disk drive, instead, it boasts with 512MB of flash memory, but the console will also have a card reader, which will allow installing more memory.