Wii U Sells $30M More than Wii in Same Period of Time

Late yesterday, Nintendo published a press release to announce that the Wii U console has sold $30 million more than the Wii in the same six week span in the United States. To get more specific, during the Wii’s first six weeks on the market, it sold $270 million, while the Wii U has already surpassed that number with $300 million and 890,000 units.

Of course, as you’re no doubt thinking, there are two excellent reasons for this: the Wii U costs more per unit, and you can find a whole lot more Wii U consoles on the shelves. By this point in the Wii’s life, the frenzy to find one was still very real, meaning that they sold out almost as soon as they got to stores. Using MATH POWERS ($270 million divided by the $250 price tag), we can see that the Wii sold roughly 1.08 million units, not accounting for taxes or anything.

Even still, Nintendo of America’s executive VP of sales & marketing Scott Moffit acknowledges this discrepancy—while ignoring the very real factor of inflation over the last six years:

“While the Wii launch established new benchmarks in the United States, Wii U has surpassed its predecessor in perhaps the most important category: revenue generation.  The demand for the Deluxe SKU, which was essentially sold out at retail this holiday, and the strong attach rate of New Super Mario Bros. U, shows that we have the value and the games to drive momentum in 2013. We look forward to offering great new experiences and bringing smiles to millions of new faces throughout the year.”

The attach rate Moffit mentions happens to be roughly 65 percent, having sold over 580,000 units in the United States. I’m still shocked that this game doesn’t have a 100 percent attach rate, considering it’s Super Mario, but hey, that’s just ME. Even with the above ratio of the Wii’s unit sales still surpassing the Wii U’s, even approaching a million units sold after six weeks is pretty impressive. I’m still excited to see what the console can do, and what developers choose to do with it. And if nothing else, I want the thing to succeed, because successful consoles equal cool games, and that’s something we can all agree on. Even still, it’s a little hard not to grimace at the somewhat conciliatory tone that Nintendo’s numbers come with.

Me—I’m gonna download that ZombiU demo today. And by the way, the Rayman Legends demo is still totally awesome.