In its first week, the Wii U sold 400,000 units in North America, and that’s probably only because Nintendo shipped the console in limited amounts. Nintendo’s total hardware sales for the week exceeded 1.2 million units, with a huge chunk of those numbers being from classic Wii sales, which sold 300,000 units, and the 3DS, which sold 250,000 units. Strangely enough, the 3DS did not sell as well as the classic DS did at 275,000 units.
As awesome as this seems, the Wii U actually fell short of the original Wii’s sales mark of 600,000 units in its first week. However, once again, this is likely just due to the numbers that Nintendo decided to ship. Wii U pre-orders sold out shortly after they were made available, which means that consumer demand was larger than Nintendo’s supply. Of course, this scarcity just makes the Nintendo fanbase want the console more, which has become Nintendo’s standard game plan and proves that numbers aren’t everything.
Source: CNET