The Wii U software library, or lack thereof, is killing it in the UK.
Sales figures provided by JVM for the month of January 2013 reveal that Nintendo is struggling to sell software to consumers. 34,000 game sales were accounted for during the month, and that includes Nintendo Land that is bundled with the Wii U Deluxe. Consequently, total hardware sales during January aren't far from the 34,000 figure despite the console being the only "next-gen console" on the market. To put that in perspective, even the Vita was able to sell more software, and the Xbox 360 sold a monstrous 810,000 units.
The official numbers are below:
System Share Sales
360 38.4% 810KPS3 25.8% 545KPC 10.8% 228KWii 8.6% 182KNDS 6.6% 139K3DS 5.3% 112KPSV 2.2% 46KWiiU 1.6% 34KPSP 0.6% 13KPS2 0.1% 2K
Sony and Microsoft haven't released their consoles, let alone shown them. If there's one lesson to be learned from this rocky Wii U launch—and perhaps Vita as well—it's that software is king. The Wii U released last year with over 20 games, but most of them were multiplatform titles that last-gen consoles saw months prior. Nintendo, like Sony, is backed by some of the best first-part studios around. It'd be a mistake to let this software drought go any longer.