It’s no secret the Wii U has been lagging behind Nintendo’s original hopes and expectations ever since it launched in November 2012. With Mario Kart 8 launching in late May though, the company has seen siginificantly increased sales for the console these past couple weeks.
After a good E3 showing, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime spoke with The Seattle Times, where he says the Wii U is close to the PS4 in terms of sales, and it will keep pace with both the PS4 and Xbox One throughout this generation:
The dirty little secret is, if you look at life-to-date numbers between Sony and Nintendo, they’d be pretty close in terms of PS4 vs. Wii U, with Xbox coming in third place. I think it’s going to be a three-horse race for the balance of this cycle.
Although the lifetime sales have no doubt increased by a wide margin since, the latest PS4 worldwide sales numbers put the console at over 7 million as of April 6th. For the Wii U, it was at 6.17 million as of March 31st, meaning Reggie’s comment isn’t that far off base, but the system still falls behind the PS4, which launched 12 months after.
With May 2014’s NPD data report arriving on Monday, Reggie was asked if he ever believes the WIi U could outsell the PS4 or Xbox One on a monthly basis. He replied, “You know, it’s going to be very interesting to see the NPD data for June.”
Do you think the Wii U will keep pace with the PS4 this generation? Or will the PS4 take a huge lead and never look back?
