Nintendo Wii Virtual Console Reaches Major Milestone

The Nintendo Wii continues to break worldwide records, but did everyone actually think that the Virtual Console would be just as popular as the regular games that are released for the Wii? People were definitely looking forward to this form of technology, because it allows people to bring back the old titles from back in the day. The Wii's Classic Controller is a great idea, which allows people to play the older games from years ago with ease. Seeing that the Wii's success is just increasing, this is by far one of the more important milestones for the Nintendo Wii.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link was released back in 1988, but it has also joined the Virtual Consoles library of games. The Nintendo Wii has been out since November 19th, 2006, which makes it a little under a year old. Zelda II is title 100 on the Wii's Virtual Console and sells for 500 Wii Points, which is $5.00 in US dollars. The 100th game milestone is a great achievement for the Nintendo Wii, but there is one other milestone that is a bit greater, one that really needs to be discussed about.

About a week ago, on June 1st, Nintendo announced that the Wii's Virtual Console has hit almost 5 million in console game downloads, which is just amazing. We knew that the Wii was really popular, but 5 million? Actually, to be exact, it was 4.7 million in console game downloads, but now it might be even closer to that 5 million mark. The dual-milestone is definitely going to be history and Nintendo should be very proud of themselves. Not only does the Nintendo Wii offer games from other Nintendo systems, but they also feature titles from other systems such as the Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx-16, which just makes the Virtual Console more popular.

The current games that are most popular out of the 4.7 million downloads are...

1. Super Mario Bros. (NES)
2. Super Mario 64. (N64)
3. Mario Kart 64. (N64
4. Super Mario World. (SNES)
5. The Legend of Zelda (NES)

All of these titles are great and it's no surprise that they are very popular. I myself didn't expect the Virtual Console to be THIS popular, but it is and it will just get more popular as Nintendo continues to add more and more titles to their library. By comparison, the XBox 360's Live Arcade has had about 25 million in downloads, which is a great achievement in itself, but the XBox has been out longer than the Wii and it offers free games as well, which can probably vouch for many of its game downloads.

4.7 million might not seem like a lot of downloads, but when you consider that you are putting out a decent amount of money for these titles, you can see why it is a lot. If these games were all free, I highly guarantee that there would be over 3 times more downloads than the XBox 360. I will continue to update everyone regarding this huge milestone update.