James Honeywell, head of consumer marketing at Nintendo UK, has said the platform holder is optimistic about Wii U's performance during the holiday period. Asked if he thinks Wii U's UK launch can replicate the strong start the console has made in the US, he told us: "Absolutely.""The US has been a fantastic launch. Obviously that's a much bigger market, and so they've got more stock, but we're hoping for the same standard of success here in the UK.
"We've got a fantastic launch line-up, and we think it'll be sold out in the first few days, if not the first few hours. But after that we've got really strong deliveries of follow-up stock.
"We hope to live up to the same kind of success with the Wii," Honeywell added at last night's midnight launch. "As you can see, people are really excited about it. Time will tell."
Nintendo claims to have sold 400,000 Wii U units during the system's first week of availability in the US, with Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime saying it's "essentially sold out of retail".