Mario and Zelda score record sales on Black Friday

Nintendo’s newest flagship video games, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3D Land, have both sold over 500,000 units in the U.S. alone, according to an interview with a Nintendo executive.

Both of the games are critical to Nintendo’s sales this holiday season, which has turned out to be a very competitive season among game publishers and hardware makers. Roughly 40 percent to 50 percent of annual U.S. retail sales take place in November and December, according to Anita Frazier, analyst at market researcher NPD. Super Mario 3D Land is Nintendo’s newest addition to their handheld, the Nintendo 3DS, and was released on November 11. Soon after, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was released the next week on November 20 for the Nintendo Wii.

With the help of Black Friday, both games broke sales records by being the fastest selling handheld Mario title and fastest selling Zelda game to date. Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime told USA Today that Super Mario 3D Land sold more than 500,000 units while The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword sold 535,000 units since launch.

Along with the game sales, the Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Wii saw big sales as well with 3DS sales tripling from early November and the Nintendo Wii selling 500,000 units during the Black Friday sales period.