Nintendo UK’s head of consumer marketing James Honeywell has said that with the Wii U launching today in the UK, Nintendo is expecting the system to sell really well and assured everyone that a replenishing stock of the system is on standby once the current one sells out sooner or later.
“The US has been a fantastic launch. Obviously that’s a much bigger market,” Honeywell said while speaking with CVG, “and so they’ve got more stock, but we’re hoping for the same standard of success here in the UK.”
“We’ve got a fantastic launch line-up, and we think it’ll be sold out in the first few days, if not the first few hours,” he continued. “But after that we’ve got really strong deliveries of follow-up stock.
“We hope to live up to the same kind of success with the Wii. As you can see, people are really excited about it. Time will tell.”
The Wii U sold 400,000 units in its opening week in the US, so seeing the same figures in the UK would be a big deal for both, Nintendo and the new home console.
Industry analyst Michael Pachter believes the Wii U can sell 3 million units by Christmas and carry strong sales through till March. Other industry analysts are saying that the shortage of Wii U’s stocks in retail is helping with the sales of the PS3 and Xbox 360, but that it’s no reason for Nintendo to worry.