Its sales are red hot

Last week Wii U launched in Japan and clocked up some impressive sales, so impressive that it even outsold the 3DS, which has been dominating hardware sales in Japan for a sustained period and outselling the competition by 2.5 times.

However, the Wii U wasn't on top for long as this week the 3DS came back with a vengeance, selling more than double the units that Wii U managed. According to Media Create, the 3DS sold a staggering 319,025 units between 10th December and 16th December, while Wii U managed to shift 126,916 systems.

As you would expect with it being a new console, Wii U outsold its main home console rivals by quite a sizeable margin, with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 posting steady sales at their usual levels. The 3DS, which has an envious number of exclusive XL consoles in Japan these days, is showing no signs of slowing down and is closing in on the magical 10 million lifetime sales mark in Nintendo's homeland. In contrast the PlayStation Vita is still struggling to get a foothold in the market, with the PSP this week outselling it two times over.

Nintendo is also dominating the software charts, with nine out of the top ten games being on a Nintendo console. The best selling game of the week was the newly released Inazuma Eleven Go 2: Chrono Stone, which finally knocked Animal Crossing: New Leaf off the top spot. Perhaps Inazuma Eleven is responsible for the huge surge in this week's 3DS sales.

The full hardware chart is below (numbers in brackets are lifetime figures in Japan):

Nintendo 3DS - 319,025 (9,118,403)
Nintendo Wii U - 126,916 (435,058)
PlayStation 3 - 42,976 (8,759,236)
PSP - 33,002 (19,521,238)
PlayStation Vita - 14,446 (1,089,067)
Nintendo Wii - 10,346 (12,619,046)
Xbox 360 - 1,760 (1,610,159)
PlayStation 2 - 1,102 (21,830,214)
Nintendo DS - 541 (32,876,010)

[source neogaf.com]