The only reason the Wii sold more software than Wii U is because of 'Wii Play'. That was bundled with a wiimote for $10 more than a wiimote on it's own. So most people who bought a second controller bought it with Wii Play. Without Wii Play the Wii U would have sold so much more than the Wii.

I don't think Wii Play was released together with Wii... Didn't it come a year or two afterwards?

Edit: Nope, I was wrong!!  2006 it says

There really is more 3rd party competition this time around. Yet, the clear winners will be ZombiU and Bo2.
Both not selling millions right away is only natural. Actually the same thing will happen to the next CoD game on PS4 and 720 being that there won`t be enough consoles by then aswell.

@op: Your presentation is really helpful in understanding how Wii U is doing. If Wii U is doing almost the same as Wii did, minus the first party games like Wii Sports and Wii Play, i think it`s safe to say that 3rd parties are also doing well enough given the install base. And that`s good!

I know, and it is unlikely that it will get close to the 2 million range because it will be too expensive, but I was just trying to state what I think is a plausable range with the conditions listed to explain the upper range. The most likely range is between 1 Million and 1.5 million, but there is the possibility that it could surpass that if Activision wanted it to.

Unfortunately, outside of increasing revenues from a game, the main reason to lower the price to the levels necessary probably doesn't apply to Call of Duty. If you sell a high quality game with a limited userbase for a discounted price you encourage people to play your game who otherwise wouldn't and (hopefully) increase sales for the sequel.

The Wii Sports comparison isn't exactly fair... Nintendo Land isn't bundled with every Wii U, only the Deluxe set. Wii Sports was bundled with all Wii's in North America.

Wii Play came out in North America in February 2007.  It was never bundled with the Wii console, just as a seperate package that included a Wii Remote for $50.

Can't wait to see more numbers here soon. It seems to be rather "in-stock" for a brand new console in a holiday period. The Wii was impossible to find for the first 2 holiday seasons it had, yet for the last 2 weeks I have walked in to various stores and seen at least 2 Wii U's available. Online is a slightly different story, and also it seems to mostly be the Basic set that is in stock as opposed to the Deluxe set.

This to me says that the casuals are not jumping ship from Wii to Wii U and Nintendo will have a very hard time differentiating the two systems to the casual market... The hardcore are the ones buying right now and getting the Deluxe sets while Basic sets are much more in stock.

Oh I didn't know that. Wii play came out launch day for the rest of the world so I just assumed it was released the same in North America. Only reason I bought it launch day was for the bundled wiimote. Such a cheap game, they shouldn't have made it.

I'm glad to see people still talk about sales on this site from time to time, but Mummelmann's right. It's hard to draw conclusions while launch fever plus holiday blitz has supplies constrained all over.

I think it's safe to say the market isn't as bonkers over the Wii U as they were over the Wii. However, the hardware is more in line with what third party publishers  would like to see, so while Wii U may not enjoy the fever that Wii had, it may succeed in building better long term software support from publishers that don't rhyme with "win kendo."

Personally I wasn't aware that the Wii had released; but every one keeps telling me Wii was a phenomenon, and of course Wii U couldn't possible live up to that kind of hype. But what's going to be interesting is to see the launch of PS720 and compare those to Wii U! Will they crush Wii U, or will they be even more disappointing than Nintendo's newest?