With the Christmas rush finally over, many manufacturers are checking over their sales figures to see how lucrative the period was for them, and one of the big hitters this Christmas, Nintendo, have revealed their findings.
Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s President, has been speaking about the sales in a statement to Reuters, in which he said that the “sales are not bad” for the company’s new Wii U console. He also stated that he feels the console is “selling steadily.”
Additionally, Satoru stated that “at the end of the Christmas season, it wasn’t as though stores in the US had no Wii U left in stock, as it was when Wii was first sold in that popular boom”
The biggest issue that Nintendo has is that the Wii U will always be comparable to the original Wii’s initial and ongoing sales, and with the original console very much capturing the zeitgeist of its time and being a leader of the motion controlled pack, it looks like a comparison that the Wii U simply cannot shake off.
In 2006 the Wii was permanently sold out in the run-up to Christmas of that year and thus became one of the most sought-after and biggest console releases ever, but whilst the Wii U hasn’t matched this boom it certainly is doing well in its own right.
Iwata also stated that a quantity balance as one reason why sales might have been slow at first, as not enough of the premium version consoles were available for customers to purchase.
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It’s not been the ideal start for Nintendo with the Wii U but there is still a long way to go for the console and with a host of megastar games incoming, things aren’t that bad for Nintendo at the moment.