Nintendo Pushes Over 1 Million Devices in a Week; Wii U “Essentially Out of Stock”
The Wii U’s domestic launch is in the bag and the sales flurry that manages to get at least one poor sucker trampled to death a year, a.k.a. Black Friday, has come to a close. So how did Nintendo fair last week? Pretty friggin’ well, actually.
In a phone interview done with CNET, Nintendo of America’s walking meme, spokesperson, and president Reggie Fils-Aime revealed that total U.S. hardware sales – including both handheld systems and home consoles – amassed in 1.2 million units sold.
The highly anticipated and equally impossible to find Wii U system (which debuted to the American public on Nov. 18th) capped off its opening week at about 400,000 units sold. Fils-Aimes is confident that number could’ve wrapped around the moon instead of just reaching orbit if Nintendo were able to pump more Wii U’s into stores in time. “Wii U is essentially sold out of retail,” Fils-Aime explains, “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.”
Trailing not far behind, the original Wii system proved it was still alive and kicking with 300,000 units pushed out of retail and into people’s homes. Looking at handheld sales last week, 275,000 DS systems (be it Lite, DSi, or XL) were sold and, surprisingly, fewer 3DS systems were pushed, coming in at 250,000 unit sales, though Reggie blames this disparity on Black Friday deals being too good to pass up on and, unofficially, the 3DS’ 3D functionality burns children’s eyes right out of their sockets (Ed: Don’t fucking listen to him).
CNET was also keen enough to ask Mr. Reggie if consumers should expect ongoing Wii U shortages as evidenced with the first Wii platform, a system that incurred holiday line brawls between parents vying for the rarity (Ed: That one’s real). “Wii was a unique phenomenon,” says Fils-Aime, admitting that consumers weren’t able to walk into a store and pick up a Wii unimpeded until Springtime 2009, over two years past the system’s late 2006 launch. “We’ve certainly learned many lessons from that and we are replenishing retailers more quickly this time around. We are looking to have as much product into retail as possible. It’s driven by consumer response.”