Wii U Japanese Sales Reach 3 Million

The latest sales numbers from Japan are in for the week of December 28 through January 3, with a big milestone for the Wii U. According to the Media Create sales numbers, the Wii U has now sold over 3 million units in Japan, clocking in at 3,020,662 units sold to date after selling an additional 53,547 units this week.

This past summer, Nintendo revealed that the Wii U had sold over 10 million units worldwide, and needed to sell 2.2 million more before March of this year to meet their projected fiscal year forecast. These Japan numbers will certainly help matters, as the Wii U is still the top-selling current-gen console there, though the PS4 is its way up, too. The PS4 outsold the Wii U this past week by over 10,000 units–a strange contrast to Christmas week, where the Wii U outstripped it by nearly 40,000 units.

Wii U sales were certainly helped by games like Splatoon and Super Mario Maker, respectively the third and fourth best-selling games in Japan for the last week (and hovering in that vicinity for some time now). Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, perhaps), those two games seem to be carrying the Wii U–Mario Kart 8 and Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem both make appearances on the radar, but they’re blips comparably. The Nintendo 3DS, predictably, dominates system sales completely with over 20 million units sold, and has plenty of titles doing incredibly well in Japan.

It will be interesting to see what Nintendo’s reveals in the coming months do to the sales of the Wii U. Depending on the expected release of the NX and the status of Legend of Zelda: Wii U, the console could see a meaningful increase or a total drop-off.