Wii out-paces last year's sales, while 3DS looks set to beat its predecessor's first year figure...

Official figures from the NPD are not out yet, but Nintendo has released their own sales figures for the month of October, and it's promising news going into the holidays.

Over 250,000 3DS units were sold during the month, bringing total US sales thus far past 1.65 million. Nintendo says the handheld its poised to beat the first-year sales of Nintendo DS, which managed 2.37 million units for the twelve months between November 2004 and October 2005. With big-name titles like Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 on the horizon, we're certainly not going to dispute that.

The ageing Wii meanwhile managed an impressive "nearly 250,000" for the month. The console is actually outpacing its sales from 2010, as Nintendo focuses evermore on an aggressive, Christmas-period marketing strategy with a range of new, low-price bundles.

The humble DS sold a handy 180,000 units, surely bringing in some much-desired profit. It means Nintendo shifted over 675,000 hardware systems in the US in October.