This Week In Sales: Even Mario Kart 8 Can’t Help Wii U Sales

Period: The week of May 26th – June 1st (2014)

Top-seller: Mario Kart 8 (Wii U) – 325,892

Nintendo 3DS sales: 4,957 | Total sales: 9,501,187

Nintendo 3DS XL sales: 18,776 | Total sales: 6,103,282

PlayStation Vita sales: 12,859 | Total sales: 2,821,901

Vita TV sales: 1,098 | 1142,75

Wii U sales: 19,312 | Total sales: 1,764,866

PlayStation 4 sales: 6,508 | 587,690

<< Last week’s software sales chart

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Mario Kart 8 was released in Japan on May 29th for the Wii U, and the game sold 325,892 copies. That’s a fairly decent amount, but unfortunately it’s also significantly lower than its predecessors.

Here’s how Mario Kart 8’s first week compares to the opening week sales of Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart 7:

Mario Kart Wii (2008) – 593,576

Mario Kart 7 (2011) – 423,619

The argument could be made that Mario Kart Wii on the Wii and Mario Kart 7 on the Nintendo 3DS debuted on platforms that had sold far more many units than the Wii U has, which is why the new game’s opening sales were lower. Unfortunately, another fact that must be taken into consideration is that Mario Kart 8’s release barely helped Wii U hardware sales.

The Wii U sold just 19,312 units for the week—lower than the Nintendo 3DS during a week where the 3DS had no new games released for it. That isn’t a good sign, and it brings back some rather unfortunate memories of Super Mario 3D World, another major Wii U game that started out slow and failed to turn the system’s fortunes around.

In the coming months, Nintendo will release Bayonetta 2, Hyrule Warriors and Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U. I doubt Bayonetta and Hyrule Warriors will do much to help sales in Japan, so at this point, it looks as though all hopes are riding on Smash to help pull the platform out of dire straits.

The top-20 software sales chart for last week is as follows:

Sales data acquired from 4Gamer and Media Create.