In an interview with Reuters earlier today, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata described the year-end sales of the company’s Wii U console as steady, if not as strong as the Wii during its launch period.
“At the end of the Christmas season, it wasn’t as though stores in the U.S. had no Wii U left in stock, as it was when Wii was first sold in that popular boom. But sales are not bad, and I feel it’s selling steadily,” Nintendo President Satoru Iwata detailed.
No specific details or forecasts for the next quarter we’re given, but Iwata did re-iterate the company’s challenge of producing quality software in order to compete with other entertainment hardware markets. The Big N’s last projected figure was 5.5 million total units sold by the end of it’s fiscal year in late March, the last presented sales data was its announcement of 638,339 consoles sold in Japan between December 8th and 30th of last year.
Iwata also spoke on the company’s challenge of working on, and releasing, both the Wii U’s basic and premium SKUs simultaneously, “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. Specifically, inventory levels for the premium, deluxe package was unbalanced as many people wanted that version and couldn’t find it.”