French games cite GameKult reports that the Wii U has sold 307,471 units in Japan during its first week on sale. These are unconfirmed unofficial figures says MCV. Putting these figures into perspective the figure is 70k less than the number of original Wii consoles sold during its debut week and also about 15k less than the PlayStation Vita managed in its debut week in Japan.
Previously we reported that in the USA the Wii U sold out straight away, the first week of sales there amounted to 425,000 units. In the UK we only have the first weekend figures which totalled 40,000 console sales. While in some territories a sell out and lack of stock may have impacted sales levels, in the UK there still seems to be plentiful stock of Wii U consoles in its various packs. It’s definitely much easier to find than a Furby or cheaper end iPad mini.
Cracking the Wii U
Also today we have had news of the first early success in Wii U cracking. A report on MCV says that the well known Wii Homebrew Channel, a way of running unofficial code on the Wii, is up and running on the Wii U. As yet it’s not running in full Wii U mode and the BootMii low level control system isn’t compatible because of its low Wii system addressing nature. The hackers say that “If we are able to resolve this, we will make a new release with BootMii support. We can all try to hack the Wii U together from inside Wii mode”.
Wii U controller early prototypes
Nintendo showed off early and original concepts for the Wii U controller at the weekend. The prototypes were discussed and shown on the official Nintendo “Iwata Asks” page. One of the engineers contributing to the discussion said jokily “It's very high-tech - a monitor and controllers stuck together by double-sided tape”. Have a look for yourself, very Heath Robinson. Also shown (above) is the two screen game-play idea which originated from a Wii Zapper with an attached screen.
Iwata: Behold the original form of the Wii U GamePad! (laughs)
