Gaming is so dead in Japan. Even a huge release like Mario Kart barely pushes hardware sales.

PS4 is doomed in japan as well, going by this.

They didn't say that the WiiU was made for Japan, but they did make choices that were important for Japanese consumers but not for NA consumers. For example, they chose small size, low energy consumption and noise reduction as important factors to take into consideration in the console design. None of those factors are important in NA. Here (in NA) we have space, low energy cost and we don't care about the noise or the size of our non-mobile electronic devices. Oh and I forgot, we do buy a lot more big screen tv making 1080p more necessary for gaming or at least the difference between 720p and 1080p is more visible even for the untrained eyes on really big screens.

This is what I'm thinking (well, hoping, anyway).

Given the traditional bad HW numbers in Japan, the anticipation for MK8 wasn't enough to change HW numbers drastically right away, but now that the game is out and has a lot of positive buzz, the baseline for WiiU hardware could sustain higher.  I'd rather see a modest first week HW bump if numbers stay higher in the weeks to come than a 30 or 40k first week and then a quick return to 6k a week.

Next week's WiiU numbers will be very telling.

The boost is 100%, not even close to 200-300%.

Not very impressive HW for Wii U, but excellent numbers for MK8.

Now, to be fair, Wii U this week is above the baseline of every other platform save the 3DS. If it can hold even half of this boost, it will be doing alright.

Its only 3 days of sales...wait for the next 4 days for the real picture

Because people rush to the store to buy MarioCart, only to wait a few days to buy a WiiU????

I'd say those a very low hardware numbers for Nintendo's "Titanfall"

It's very impressive that this remake was able to outsell knack

4 days is the normal first week for most software in Japan.  When people say first week, that's what they mean.  Knowing what it did over the first seven days isn't any more relevant than knowing the first four days and then the next seven.  When we compare it to other Mario Kart games the data won't be the first seven days, it'll be the first tracking week it fell in which generally means 4 days (at least for the last three Mario Karts, didn't feel like checking any further back).

The first seven days just isn't a particularly useful piece of information.  Sure, it would have sold more with three more days, but people's expectations were based on what it would do in four days.  So saying it wasn't a full week doesn't change how people react to the numbers.

Argh.....

I expected between 20k-30k WiiU sales, close bet. Besides MK8, slow week