SecondWar said:
Sales are in no way awful, but in fact the opposite. You are inaccurately comparing the UK to the larger American and Japanese markets, as well as Europe as a whole. The UK is not as larger as those markets even if it is the largest in Europe. Look last week's UK sales chart (see table below), 40K units is second on the list. Those are very good numbers for the UK, and as the OP said, demand outstripped supply and were only held back by supply limitations (typical of any console launch).
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They are still very low. There is no rational way you can call these numbers "very good". Even if it was 100% sold out (which it doesn't seem to be), launching in the holiday season with only 40k consoles would be ridiculous. Launches are supposed to be higher than normal sales. It is kind of an exception for the US launch because of Black Friday isn't a normal week, but it isn't the case here. If the Vita had sold 16k units on launch and was right under the 360, that wouldn't somehow make for a good launch.
First weeks in the UK
360 - 70k
DS - 87k
Wii - 105k
3DS - 113k
PS3 - 165k
PSP - 185k
Vita we never really got reliable numbers, but even the low end was more than the Wii U. Quite a few of those launches weren't even in the holiday season. The Wii U is significantly lower than all of those.
