It's going to be a big number isn't it. If you think about all the home console releases and all the handhelds Nintendo has made available to our wallets over the past 30 years, it's going to be a lot. Well, made your guess? Ready?

654.12 million.

When broken down, Nintendo managed to push 268.97 million home consoles, ranging from the NES, through SNES, N64, GameCube, Wii and finally the Wii U (though the latter of the bunch there hasn't made much of an impact yet). On the other hand, handheld machines have sold far more, with a total of 385.15 million Gameboy, Gameboy Colour, GBA, GBA SP, DS, DS Lite, 3DS and 3DS XL sold over the past 30 years.

If you thought that was impressive however, wait till you hear the stats for software sales. For home consoles, we have nearly 2.2 billion games sold (2.19509 billion to be more exact). In an interesting turn of events, handheld games have actually sold less, suggesting perhaps that home console gamers buy more games in the long run. For all the Gameboy and DS variants over the past few decades, Nintendo sold an almost-as-impressive, 1.90725 billion games.

These stats were announced by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, who perhaps wanted to assure the world that while Nintendo wasn't quite in fighting shape right now with its consoles, it's clearly a force to be reckoned with. Which is of course, something we knew already, or we wouldn't be talking about the Wii U at all.

Kitguru Says: Some quite ridiculous figures there and probably far more impressive than either Microsoft or Sony can manage, since Nintendo has been in the game longer than both of them. [Cheers GoNintendo]

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