Mario Kart 8 is breathing life into the Wii U

Maybe the Wii U isn’t doomed after all. Following the release of Mario Kart 8, the two most recent VGChartz weekly sales charts show that the Wii U sold more units than the Xbox One for the first time since Microsoft’s next-gen console launched last November. The latest NPD report confirmed that Mario Kart 8 had been the second best-selling game of the month, even with just two days on the market after releasing on May 30th, but the ensuing resurgence of hardware sales is an even more exciting trend for Nintendo.

Based on the weekly charts, Nintendo sold 46,500 Wii U’s in the US from May 25th to May 31st and 29,300 units during from June 1st to June 7th. The Xbox One, on the other hand, sold just over 30,000 units through the last week of May and around 22,500 units during the first week of June. Looking back at the week ending May 24th, before Mario Kart 8 hit store shelves, Nintendo sold a paltry 10,000 Wii U’s to Microsoft’s 24,000 Xbox Ones.

Mario Kart 8 has been an equalizer for the Wii U. Nintendo lives and dies based on the quality (and quantity) of its first-party releases, but with a so few major titles releasing before the end of the year, we should expect to see several more peaks and valleys before Nintendo has a chance to stabilize with a more consistent release schedule in 2015.