Wii U Selling Steadily, Deluxe Version Outselling Basic

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata showed great optimism for the system, speaking with Reuters in an interview.

“At the end of the Christmas season, it wasn’t as though stores in the U.S. had no Wii U in stock, as it was when Wii was first sold in that popular boom,” said Iwata.  “But sales are not bad, and I feel it’s selling steadily.”

According to Reuters sales numbers, the system cleared 638,000 sales in Japan for the month of December, though U.S. sales numbers weren’t available at the time.  However, it appears that the Deluxe bundle is outselling the Basic one by a mile, with a larger memory base (32 GB compared to 8 GB) and a free copy of Nintendo Land.

“It was the first time Nintendo released two models of the game console at the same time…and I believe there was a challenge with balancing this,” said Iwata.  “Specifically, inventory levels for the premium, deluxe package was unbalanced as many people wanted that version and couldn’t find it.”