If people honestly believe this is anything other than holiday boost + Mario, they are only fooling themselves. Now, I don't believe Wii U will drop below 10K next year, like this year, but it should hover ~20K once the holidays are over. Yes, that's an improvement, but it's not going to be enough to win Japan.
Reason for the drop is simple, Wii U is going to be experiencing another gaming drought next year. Nintendo already confirmed that some of their bigger games won't be launching in mid-2014, so late 2014 will be the earliest. And given how many big 3rd party games (especially ones that appeal to the Japanese audience) aren't launching on the Wii U, a drought is definite.
Sony, on the other hand, is making sure they have a few titles that appeal to the Japanese audience. Of course, given how fast the 2 preorder allotments for Japan sold out, I think the HW itself is appealing enough to keep it selling in Japan. Though, if Sony launched in Japan this year, they definitely wouldn't have been able to keep enough units in the US to actually do battle with MS. Sony knows they have EU and Japan on lock, at least compared to MS when it comes to Japan.
