Mario Kart 8 Has Increased Wii U Sales By 400%

But I like to think that it was actually the Luigi Death Stare that sold all those consoles!

Speaking to Venture Beat, Reggie Fils-Aime confirmed that Mario Kart 8 is not only selling in droves, it’s driving console sale of the Wii U to the point where it’s selling four times as much as it was previously.

“Mario Kart 8 has increased the sell-through of the Wii U hardware business by a factor of four,” he said, in an interview with VentureBeat. “In the two weeks prior to the launch, versus what we’ve seen now following the launch, we’re selling at a daily rate four times higher than where we were before.”

That’s fairly incredible, but not entirely unexpected. Mario Kart Wii was, after all, the original Wii’s highest selling game.

But an interesting question: would Nintendo have been better waiting for the Wii U’s install base to grow before releasing Mario Kart 8, or were Nintendo right to use Mario Kart 8 to drive the install base? It’s a genuine chicken/egg situation.

“We’re still selling Mario Kart DS when that product was launched in 2005,” explained Reggie. “We’re still selling New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii. That was launched, I think, in 2008? We sell product for years. The argument of, boy, maybe Nintendo should have waited until the installed base was higher? No. These games drive our installed base.”

Well, there you have it: the egg sells the chicken, then the chicken keeps making a shitload more eggs. Mystery solved.


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