The Wii U has been struggling to gain a foothold since its initial release some years ago. Like with many other Nintendo consoles they had trouble securing top third-party releases, but more importantly they failed to establish what the Wii U really was. I can’t tell you the amount of times people asked me what the Wii U was. Was it some Wii add-on, was it a new console, is it a Wii on a tablet, and so on. Now that the holiday numbers are in, it finally seems that the Nintendo is seeing a pretty big rise for the Wii U and for that we are thankful as the little white box has a lot to offer those looking for a dedicated games machine.
Wii U established new benchmarks for hardware and software sales in a single month in December. This helped total hardware and software sales in 2014 increase by more than 29 percent and more than 75 percent, respectively, over sales in 2013.
Nintendo 3DS also had a strong December, including its largest month ever for first-party software sales. This was primarily fueled by Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, which has already surpassed 2 million combined physical and digital units sold in a little more than three months, and Pokémon Omega Ruby and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire, which have combined to sell over 2.6 million physical and digital units in their first six weeks.
“Wii U had its strongest year yet thanks to the highly anticipated software lineup and the introduction of the amiibo platform,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “Fans can anticipate another strong year for 2015, especially with more highly anticipated games likeSplatoon and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D, as well as New Nintendo 3DS XL, arriving in the first half of 2015.”
Other Nintendo highlights from the full 2014 year include:
Wii U
- Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U sold over 1.7 million physical and digital units and 1.3 million physical and digital units, respectively, in 2014.
- Total sales of amiibo figures in 2014 are nearly twice the sales of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U.
Nintendo 3DS
- In 2014, 16 Nintendo 3DS titles sold at least 250,000 units. Of those titles, eight sold more than 500,000 units and three sold over 1 million units.
- In 2014, the top 15 best-selling hand-held titles were all released on the Nintendo 3DS family of systems.
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