Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata is rolling in six-dollar bills right about now. (Okay, since they don't exist, a bunch of fives and ones.) Speaking to Reuters, Iwata revealed that 800,000 Wiis were sold in the US during the week of November 24-30. That's up nearly half a million units over last year's 350,000 consoles sold during the same period, according to Nintendo's sales data.

Iwata sees the downturn in the US economy as an upturn for sales of Wii. "When the economy is strong, people tend to buy three things from the top of their wish list. But when things are bad, people often buy only the first thing on their list," he remarked, concluding, "Fortunately for us a lot of shoppers put our products at the top of their list."

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime stated in October that Wii production was ramping up for the holidays, but still probably wouldn't meet demand. There must have been at least an additional 450,000 consoles for shoppers to snap up Thanksgiving week, though – but will that be the extent of the holiday production bump? With Wal-Mart.com today touting tens of thousands of the system for sale, we'll have to wait for full holiday sales numbers to see how much ramping Nintendo really upped.