The Wii went on sale in the UK yesterday and reportedly sold 50,000 units in 12 hours! We noticed on Hitwise that searches for the Nintendo Wii overtook searches for all other gaming consoles and even overtook the perennial favourite, iPod, to become the most searched for toy in the lead up to Christmas.
Share of UK internet searches for “nintendo wii” surged up 147% last week. The term “nintendo wii” was among the top 100 search terms based on volume of UK internet searches last week and ranked as the fourth highest volume product search term, after “premium bonds”, “car insurance” and “broadband”.
Two weeks ago, searches for the console overtook searches for “nintendo ds”, the second most searched for games console. Last week, searches for the Wii overtook those for the iPod for the first time, with searches for “nintendo wii” 125% higher than searches for “ipod”.
Whilst last week was one of the busiest weeks for Christmas shopping online. Visits to the Hitwise Retail Index (an index of 100 of the top retailers based on visits) were up 5.4% year on year and up 4% over the previous week. In spite of this, searches for many popular gaming consoles declined. Our search data shows that whilst searches for “nintendo wii” surged up last week, searches for “xbox 360″, “psp”, “ps3″ and “playstation 3″ all declined slightly.

Postscript:
I received some emails and comments asking why the Playstation 3 was not included in my chart. The PS3 is not yet available in the UK, so as you might expect, the share of UK internet searches for the console are quite a bit lower than for the Wii which launched last week.
The following chart shows searches for popular consoles, including the PS3.