Nintendo can breathe easy this month, after the release of Mario Kart 8 caused Wii U sales to skyrocket in the United Kingdom. UK retail tracking company GFK Chart-Track announced that the release of Mario Kart 8 is responsible for the Wii U hardware sales to jump 666% over the weekend, and that 82% of all Wii U sales came from the Mario Kart 8 bundle. Just last month in an investor briefing, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata stated his belief that a single game can influence console sales, and it turns out that he was absolutely correct.
It’s quite possible that sales for Mario Kart 8 were even higher, as GFK does not track digital sales, but only physical copies. In addition to being included in 82% of the Wii U bundle sales, Mario Kart 8 broke the record for the best-selling first week of any Wii U game since the console launched back in 2012. Overall, Mario Kart 8 was the second best selling game of the week, only taking second place to Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs, which is not only Ubisoft’s fastest selling title to date, but is also a game that is available on five different platforms (Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC) while Mario Kart 8 is a Wii U exclusive title.
Nintendo has made only one mention of the number of Mario Kart 8 sales, with a post on various social media sites saying over the weekend, 1.2 million copies of Mario Kart 8 were sold. It’s still uncertain if this includes both digital and physical copies. Either way, it’s good to see Nintendo finally succeeding with Wii U sales, and it’s even better that Satoru Iwata’s prediction about one game changing everything was accurate. What do you think? Do you think Mario Kart 8 alone will be a Wii U savior? Or do you think that it’s going to take more than one fancy title to sell units. Let us know in the comments what you think.