The Wii U got launched in North America a week back, on November 18th, and its launch was riddled with several reported bugs and issues. But it looks like those weren’t enough to keep Nintendo’s new home console from selling well.
Nintendo’s North America boss Reggie Fils-Aime confirmed to CNET in an interview over the phone that the firm managed to sell 1.2 million hardware units in NA last week, 400,000 of which were Wii Us.
“Wii U is essentially sold out of retail and we are doing our best to continually replenish stock,” Fils-Aime told CNET. “Retailers are also doing their best to get the product to store shelves. But as soon as product hits retail, they’re selling out immediately.”
The Wii, which is now officially a previous gen console, sold 300,000 units, which is exceptionally strong, and not just for a system that is now practically redundant.
“Wii was a unique phenomenon,” said Reggie. “You couldn’t walk into a retailer and buy a Wii until spring of 2009. We’ve certainly learned many lessons from that and we are replenishing retailers more quickly this time around. We are looking to have as much product into retail as possible. It’s driven by consumer response.”
The 3DS also sold plenty- it moved an impressive 250,000 units, but quite surprisingly (and hilariously, in a way), the DS, its predecessor, outsold it by 25k units and sold 275,000 devices. Reggie cited some “significant” Black Friday deals for the system as the reason for this strange occurance. He believes the 3DS “continues on record-setting pace”, after it recently crossed 22 million units sold worldwide and 6 million in North America.
Several developers, like DICE and THQ, have recently been talking about how the Wii U has certain issues which might affect it in the future, but Nintendo is adamant that the system is strong in its own rights. Reggie Fils-Aime even claims that third party games look better on the Wii U than they do on the 360 and the PS3.
Industry analyst Michael Pachter believes the Wii U will continue to have strong sales for a considerably long amount of time.