Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has gone on record with Reuters stating that the company has a good chance of beating its own earnings forecast. The company expects its operating profit in the business year ending next March to grow 60.5 percent to 145 billion yen on sales of 740 billion yen, which would be a 45 percent increase.

"We had come up with the current earnings forecasts before we sold even a single unit of the Wii and when we were not so sure about the cannibalization effect between the Wii and the DS," explained Iwata.

He continued, "Confidence could be too strong a word, but there is an emerging possibility (for higher earnings results)."

Speaking of the "cannibalization effect," Iwata pointed out that sales of the Nintendo DS have not had any negative impact on the Wii launch. "Some analysts say the largest rival of the Wii is the DS. But if you take a look at DS sales in the United States in the Thanksgiving week, or DS sales in Japan in the week of the Wii launch, there has been little impact," he said.

Yesterday, GameDaily BIZ reported on initial Wii launch numbers out of Japan, which indicated sales of almost 400,000 units. Today, Enterbrain has passed along its Famitsu Marketing Flash Report, which has more exact (although still preliminary) figures. According to the report, an estimated 372,000 Wiis were sold during the first two days in Japan. Interestingly, Wii Sports (which isn't bundled with the console there) took the top spot with 176,880 units. This was closely followed by Hajimete no Wii (Wii Play) with 171,888 units. And Zelda: Twilight Princess trailed behind in third with 145,068 units. The total software to hardware tie ratio in Japan thus far is at 1.69.