After rocketing up the charts the past several weeks, the Nintendo GameCube has now officially reached No. 1 -- it's America's top-selling home video game console, according to direct sales data from the nation's leading retailers.

What Nintendo hoped for has happened! Nintendo GameCube sold more than half a million systems to consumers during Thanksgiving week, easily surpassing its console competitors. Among all game devices, it trailed only Nintendo's portable Game Boy Advance, which sold almost 600,000 units to U.S. buyers during the week.

"All along, our business plan for this year was to maximize consumer interest and sales during the fourth quarter," says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. "But frankly, we're overwhelmed by how successful we've been. Our price cut of Nintendo GameCube has ignited sales to the degree that it may turn out to be the best-selling console for the entire month of November. We're tracking to sell more systems in the last eight weeks of the year than we did in the previous 10 months combined."

This surely is fantastics news! Hopefully, our beloved Cube will do just as good in both the US and Europe during the remainder of December.

More as it breaks!