Wii U Sales Up 1,500% in Japan Thanks to Wii Party U as Console Passes Xbox 360, PS3, and the Vita
Wii U sales have surged in Japan since the release of Wii Party U with Nintendo selling over 38,000 units this week. In fact, the company did so well this week that they passed competitors, PS3, Vita, and Xbox 360.
According to Media Create, last week the console a measly 2,598, making the new figures a 1,500 percent bump up.
Wii Party U sold almost as many games as the console sold units as they sold over 37,000 giving it a 6th place debut on the Japanese hottest selling software list.
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More impressively the Pokemon X and Y games accounted for 162,347 games sold with 2,731,470 the week before. The 3DS XL sold over 58,000 units.
Wii Party U was released on October 31 in Japan and on October 25 in the U.S. and Europe.
Nintendo recently confirmed that the Wii U sold over 460,000 around the world in the last 6 months in a time period ending on September 30.
Altogether, the console sold 300,000 units last quarter, a significant increase from the 160,000 the previous quarter.
Nintendo also sold 6.3 million units of software in the last 6 months, and a total of 3.91 million Wii U's since launch reports IGN.
While numbers still are not great, Nintendo's rise in popularity is largely due in part to the lowering of the console, and the influx of exclusive games that were severely lacking at launch. Games such as Pikmin 3, The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker HD, and the upcoming Mario Bros U and Mario Kart 8 are helping turn things around.
"Their sales remain pretty weak, so although the price cut helped, it isn't enough of a turnaround to instill confidence that sales will rebound," Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, told NBC News.
Wii U sales have gone up by over 200 percent in the U.S. from August to September, and 685 percent in the UK.
"We haven't had the sales we wanted on Wii U hardware. We haven't had the software for most of this year. But we have some quite ambitious numbers, particularly with some of our biggest franchises coming," said U.K. marketing director Shelly Pearce. "Our monthly tracking shows that Wii remains the No.1 console for brand awareness. This offers us a massive opportunity to convert Wii owners to Wii U."
She also said Nintendo has a lot of work to do to be on the up-and-up, but the interest is definitely growing.
