Nintendo Co.’s sales are speeding along faster than a getaway car, shrugging off economic woes as if they were bugs on the windshield.

Its Wii videogame console continues to be sold out in many stores. Sales of its DS handheld console remain hot despite its being a four-year-old product, ancient by game technology standards.

Sales of the Wii Fit exercise game, launched in May, are on track to surpass those of one of 2008’s bestselling titles, Grand Theft Auto IV, by the end of the year, according to projections by Wedbush Morgan Securities.

All that has driven up the Kyoto, Japan, company’s market value to nearly $45 billion, on par with Walt Disney Co.

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The latest data on video game software sales from market research firm NPD shows continued robust demand.

In May, video game software sales rose 41% on a year-over-year basis. Pacific Crest’s Evan Wilson, in his review of the data, noted that console hardware sales saw little benefit from the launch of Take-Two’s (TTWO) Grand Theft Auto IV. He also noted that third-party titles continue to find it difficult to gain any traction on the Nintendo Wii. He notes that 10 of the top 15 tiles for the Wii are produced by Nintendo, accounting for 78% of unit sales on the Wii.

The top revenue generating games in the month were GTA IV, Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii, Activision’s (ATVI) Guitar Hero III and Rock Band.

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The New York Times had an article today about the loss of women in the science and technology fields as they hit their 30s and beyond. It cites a report that blames a macho culture intrinsic to those fields. But it’s possible that readers in the tech field missed it, as it only ran in the Style section of the paper’s Web site rather than the Technology section. Because apparently the loss of female programming and engineering talent has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with the latest swimsuits. An article on the Wii Fit, however, was deemed worthy of appearing in both sections.

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