Well, the doomtrain for WiiU is starting, but let's look at the facts: the WiiU has overall a pretty good launch.
To start with the thing: yes, it sells bad in europe. Not as bad as X360 in Japan, but bad. How can I say it launched pretty well?
Let's take a look:
4 weeks USA:
WiiU: 849,068
Wii: 864,647
PS3: 378,603
X360: 477,303
So WiiU did 98% Wii, 224% PS3 and 178% X360. Looks excellent.
3 weeks europe:
WiiU: 340,310
Wii: 618,450
PS3: 691,843
X360: 403,037
WiiU in europe did 55% Wii, 49% PS3 and 84% X360. Bad here.
2 weeks japan:
WiiU: 437,390
Wii: 460,235
PS3: 130,335
X360: 65,430
In japan we have 95% Wii, 335% PS3 and 668% X360. OK, that is XBOX 360. In Japan.
4 weeks worldwide:
Keep in mind, the consoles didn't launch worldwide at the same time, so this is pretty skewed. It should work for Wii though, it was also launched in a window of some weeks.
WiiU: 1,817,166
Wii: 2,071,242
PS3: 524,687
X360: 948,162
That are 88% Wii, 346% PS3, 192% X360. Pretty decent.
That looks pretty good. I expected something between 50 million and probably PS3/X360 numbers lifetime for WiiU. Therefore I expected launch-numbers with around 50-70% Wii. But it launched - with the exception of europe - significantly better than PS3 and XBOX360. And it did 88% of the launch the winner of the last gen did. In the USA and Japan it is even more than 90%. That is by far more than I expected. Even with the burden of bad european sales, the WiiU did a pretty good launch.
And to set the european numbers into perspective: The WiiU sold around half of what PS3 did in europe in the same time. But it sold more than double the number that PS3 did in the US and more than 3 times the number in Japan. While the european numbers are bad without a question, worldwide the sales look good.
