Nintendo Sold 890,000 Wii U Consoles In 2012

Nintendo has famously said it was going to sell 5.5 million Wii U units before the end of the fourth quarter. It’s now January, and the company that Mario built has revealed its sales numbers fo...
Nintendo Sold 890,000 Wii U Consoles In 2012
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Nintendo has famously said it was going to sell 5.5 million Wii U units before the end of the fourth quarter. It’s now January, and the company that Mario built has revealed its sales numbers for the U.S. The results? It’s looking pretty good at the moment.

According to Nintendo, it sold 460,000 Wii U units in December. Combine that with the number of consoles it sold in November, which includes the 400,000 it sold in its first week, and you have combined sales of 890,000 units sold in 2012. Pretty solid numbers if a little disappointing compared to the original Wii’s massive launch. Does that translate to Nintendo being disappointed? Not at all, as the company is thrilled to be making more money on the more expensive console.

“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,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “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.”

Speaking of New Super Mario Bros. U, the launch title sold more than 580,000 units in 2012. Nintendo says that’s that an attach rate of more than 65 percent. Now, attach rate isn’t everything, but it’s rare for a game to have that high of an attach rate on any console. It will be interesting to see if the game can keep up the pace as more Wii U units are sold.

As for the Nintendo 3DS, it was a solid holiday season for hardware and software. The 3DS sold 1.25 million units in December and crossed 7.7 million units sold life to date in the U.S. alone. In games, New Super Mario Bros. 2 became the fourth 3DS title to surpass 1 million units sold.

As for Nintendo’s legacy systems, the Wii sold 475,000 units in December with Just Dance 3 becoming the tenth Wii title to sell more than 5 million units. The Nintendo DS is still staying strong as well with 470,000 units sold last month.

All in all, Nintendo sold 2.65 million hardware units in December. The company notes that this is eleventh consecutive year that Nintendo has sold at least 8 million hardware units in the U.S. It’s quite the feat considering the Gameboy and Nintendo DS made up the bulk of those sales before the Wii launched in 2006.

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