How To Have Wii Fun

In Pictures: 10 Top Games For The Wii

Sorry to spoil Santa's secret, but at least 2 million of you will wake up during the holidays to discover you're the proud owner of a shiny new Wii. During November, Nintendo sold an unprecedented number of consoles, reports the NPD Group, driving the total population of Wiis in the U.S. to 15.4 million. Nintendo's waggle-controlled consoles are now owned by some 20% of the U.S. population.

And of course you want a Wii; it is only the hottest holiday wish-list item since Hypercolor tees. And with the Wii's widespread appeal--bringing family members of all ages together for bouts of virtual tennis or bowling--its an easy gift everyone will enjoy. Kids want to be blasting away at on-screen targets with the Wii Zapper. Friends want to share their "Animal Crossing" experiences, live, over the Internet with the chat-capable Wii Speak. We all want to design our own Mii so we can watch its body inflate and deflate as we progress through "Wii Fit's" workout regimen.

It is not just the console, though, whose sales are soaring. The past two years have been a Battle Royale of sorts as consumers have stalked UPS delivery trucks and harassed GameStop (nyse: GME - news - people ) employees in the hopes of snagging an all-too-scarce Wii. With the steady influx of new owners, every old Wii game is new again. Unlike most videogames that, at best, have a three-month retail shelf life, six-month old Wii games still top the monthly best-sellers lists.

Personal trainer "Wii Fit," which was released last May, sold 697,000 copies this November. "Wii Play" is over a year old, but sold almost 800,000 units last month--rivaling sales of Microsoft's (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Xbox 360. The six-month old "Mario Kart" sold over 600,000 copies. Conversely, the new "Guitar Hero: World Tour" sold less than half a million copies on the Wii.

"We are seeing a new paradigm where titles such as 'Wii Play' continue to perform in the top 10 month after month," says Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing. "With so many new consumers discovering videogames, these titles are something they haven't experienced." Even "Wii Music," which had disappointing sales at launch, is "picking up steam," Dunaway says. That means Nintendo (other-otc: NTDOY.PK - news - people ) games are no longer constrained to the narrow "launch window" demand curve that the industry thought governed most videogame sales. And it puts Nintendo in the position of trying to craft new retail strategies to ensure its games remain visible amidst all the new titles popping out for the Wii.

That explosion of games creates something of a dilemma for new Wii owners. Some 306 games were released for the Wii console in 2008 compared to 264 for the Xbox 360 and 201 for the PlayStation 3, according to EEDAR's GamePulse database. This glut of content--much of which isn't very good--makes buying a Wii game a leap of faith. Publishers want to capitalize on the growing audience of Wii gamers, but few outside of Nintendo have learned how to make a good Wii game. The average review score for games on the console is 62 out of 100.