With Nintendo gearing up for its European release of the new Nintendo Wii U console this Friday (30th of Nov), the company has already seen pretty big sales of the new next-gen console since its release in the US at the start of the month.
Nintendo’s North American President Reggie Fils-Aime has been touting the success of the new console to tech website CNET and he has revealed that in the first week of its US release Nintendo sold over 400,000 Wii U consoles and plenty of accessories.
Now this is a large amount of consoles to ship, especially with the scepticism that the device has seen, but to put this into perspective, the original Wii console sold 600,000 units in the equivalent time period back in 2006 upon its release. Anyone that was shopping around this time in 2006 will hopefully remember that this was a massive boon for Nintendo at the time who had been seen as failing after their Gamecube console didn’t fair too well prior to the Wii.
Nintendo will surely be happy with sales equalling two thirds of the original Wii’s performance, especially when they consider the current state of the global economy and the offerings that are available from Sony and Microsoft.
Even though the sales have been lower than the original console, Fils-Aime also stated that the initial batch of stock has effectively sold out.
Fils-Aime was positive about this fact by stating the “Wii U is essentially sold out of retail and we are doing our best to continually replenish stock”. “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.”
Additionally, when questioned about the last product release from Nintendo, the handheld 3DS console, Reggie revealed that the 3DS has now outperformed the original DS by selling more than 6 million in its first 21 months which is a cool one million more than the original DS.
We will be getting our hands on a new Wii U console this week with Mario and ZombiU so stay tuned for our impressions from Friday onwards.
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