Happier times?

Although those who have purchased the Wii U - us included - are perfectly happy with the system, experts and analysts want cold, hard numbers to prove how well a new piece of hardware is doing. And sadly, in the case of the Wii U, those figure are a little on the depressing side.

Eurogamer has conduced its own investigation into the commercial fortunes of Nintendo's newest system, and has found the following:

  • Wii U had sold 80,000 in the UK at the beginning of January (after five weeks on sale) - that's lower than Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 after same period
  • Wii U took four weeks to earn as much money as Wii did in its launch weekend (despite Wii U being priced higher)
  • Wii U sales are around 1.9m worldwide (albeit with no data outside of Japan for January so far). This is far less than the company's 5.5m target for the end of March

It goes without saying that the Wii U needs more games - Nintendo itself has admitted as much. Those exclusives are coming, but it would seem that the initial rush of interest in the platform has waned somewhat, with many people no doubt holding back until new software appears.

The long-term success of a platform can't be seen in the opening months of availability - look at the 3DS, for example - but we sincerely hope that the Wii U can overcome this setback and rack up some sales later in 2013. It certainly deserves to, regardless of the data.

[source eurogamer.net]