Mario Kart 8 Helps Boost Wii U Sales In Japan

Mario Kart 8 is one of the more anticipated Nintendo Wii U titles to be released this year, and with the sluggish sales of the console, we guess many are wondering if first-party games like Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. will be able to help generate demand for the console. Fortunately enough it looks like over in Japan, the game has done much for the console by increasing sales.

According to a report from Media Create, Mario Kart 8 had managed to sell over 325,000 boxed copies of the game during its opening weekend. This allowed the game to top weekly software charts in the country where it eclipsed titles like Mobile Suit Gundam Side Stories who had sold 82,000 units.

This sounds like quite a success story for Nintendo, right? Based on the numbers, the console managed to sell 19,000 units last week, which is a marked improvement over the previous week’s sales by around 9,000, which is saying a lot. However the difference in Wii U consoles sold versus the number of games sold seems to suggest that gamers who bought the game already have a Wii U, and that maybe it might not be compelling enough to get new gamers on board, yet.

The game has been met with positive reviews so far, and even chalked up a Metacritic score of 85. According to Nintendo, they have managed to sell 1.2 million copies of the game so far, although we have to wonder if that 1.2 million figure has had a huge impact on Wii U sales around the world. Perhaps it’s still too early to tell, but what do you guys think?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gaming
Tags: mario kart 8, Nintendo, Wii U