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.

WiiU must be getting a lot of google traffic from people wanting to doom them.

So, good news for Nintendo then.

Not surprised one bit.

Wow the Vita sold more?

Ok, fair point. They are not 'very good' as I initially said. A 100% sellout is good as it shows there is strong demand for the console. The problem lies with Nintendo as they haven't (for whatever reason) supplied more consoles.

So what we have learned is shocking. It's not possible to sell more consoles than what you shipped! For some reason I thought the laws of physics didn't apply during console launches. The real question is, what is up with supply? Maybe when Nintendo said factory issues wouldn't be a factor, they were trying to cover their ass with investors.

If people really want a Wii-U, they aren't hard to find here (see kowenicki post or others where you can pretty easily find them online). No one I know knew the console came out last week. It's been a terrible launch, if they sold out at 40K, its a terrible launch from Nintendo , they should've delayed it until next year to and focus on Japan and America this year. If its not sold out, it's just a plain terrible launch.

Interesting.

Nintendo needs:
1) better advertising as what I've seen so far is crap. It doesn't show the awesomeness of Nintendoland or any other game like ZombiU
2) drop the basic sku. Its crap. Focus on Deluxe and bundling options.
3) ADVERTISE!!!! Seriously. Wii launch had a ton of awesome "Wii want to Play" spots. This has had like zero.

I heard germany and france were preordering at a faster rate then the rest of europe. I really don't know why people are spinning this into disaster. You just have to watch the news here to know we are 'doomed' financially.