Wii Fit, Nintendo’s popular video game, is currently the most searched-for product by UK Internet shoppers in the run-up to Christmas. During October there were more UK Internet searches for Wii Fit than the Nintendo Wii, the most popular product last Christmas. After Wii Fit and the Wii console, the third most searched-for gadget is the Apple iPhone.

The popularity of Nintendo’s Wii Fit, which accounted for one in six searches for a video game during October, has helped online searches for video games overtake those for consoles in the run-up to Christmas. Judging by the search data, it looks as if the current generation of consoles – the Wii, Playstation 3 and X-Box 360 – have started to mature.

The chart below illustrates the volume of searches for three portfolios of search terms over the last three years. The first portfolio contains search terms related specifically to the consoles themselves, while the other two contain terms relating to actual video games and games console accessories. As you can see, last Christmas was the big year for actual console searches, but this year we haven’t seen a similar pre-Christmas uptick. However, searches for video games themselves have continued to increase, implying that this Christmas there will be more searches for console games than the actual consoles themselves.

Looking in more detail at the most searched for games during October, it is multi-platform video games that are most popular; almost one in two video game searches are for titles published across more than one console. Three of the top five most searched for video games in the UK during October were multi-platform: Far Cry 2, Call of Duty: World at War (released this week) and Saints Row 2. Wii Fit has helped Nintendo Wii Games into second place, accounting for almost one in four video game searches. Fable 2 - launched solely on the Microsoft Xbox 360 at the end of October - helped Xbox games stay above Sony Playstation games in the search chart.

In the run up to Christmas my colleague Richard Seymour - Client Intelligence Analyst and resident Hitwise consumer electronics expert – will be posting a lot more analysis on this topic. Over the next week there will be posts about mobile phones and netbooks, so keep an on the blog.

Robin Goad

Robin Goad is Research Director, Hitwise UK. This piece was originally published on Hitwise analyst blog here. 

Image by lynnftw