Sales of Nintendo Co. Ltd.’s Wii surged in the third week of December in Japan as more supplies of the hard-to-get games console arrived in shops across the country.

Sales totaled 279,277 units for the week, according to figures from Media Create. That’s more than double the number sold a week earlier and the greatest weekly sales yet with the exception of launch week, when 350,358 consoles were sold, according to Media Create.

The Nintendo Wii can play movies taken with most digital cameras without additional software. But if you have existing movies that were compressed in a format that the Wii does not understand, you can use Wii Transfer to convert those movies to play in the Wii’s Photo Channel.

In order to get your movies onto the Wii you will need an SD card writer for Wii Transfer to copy the movie files to. Once the movie has been converted and saved on the SD card, you insert the SD card into the Wii and use the Photo Channel to browse and play your movies.

The final numbers are in, and in terms of unit sales, the Wii is the unquestioned winner of the holiday shopping battle, with estimates claiming that Nintendo’s console is outselling the PS3 at a rate of two to one. The success of the Wii comes as a huge surprise to many, after Nintendo essentially conceded the battle of the last generation to Microsoft and Sony. The unconventional motion-sensitive controller, combined with the weird name, also set many to thinking that the Wii would keep Nintendo in third place.

Apple and Nintendo share a lot in common with both liking white, both having an inclination to think different, both appealing to the average consumer and both up against powerful opponents.

One that Apple needs to both emulate and get in on the Wii action. Actually, emulating the reasons for its success will be near impossible, but still, there’s some food for thought when you look at the Wii.

After all the stories about how people broke everything around them and themselves because of intense playing and the controller straps getting ripped off, Nintendo offered to send everyone new straps.

Ryan Block writes over at Engadget: “And not a minute too soon! After all that “excited” gameplay we’ve been doing over the holiday weekend, we were starting to think we might assassinate our damn HDTV with a tennis smash in Wii Sports.”