A Link Between Worlds manages to outperform Super Mario 3D World

The latest estimates for video game sales on the week ending the 23rd in the US are in and Super Mario 3D World for the Wii U does not disappoint. Additionally, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds for the Nintendo 3DS family of systems continues the trend of high performing Nintendo 3DS games.

Coming in at 5th on this weeks US charts is Super Mario 3D World, pulling off an impressive 243,192 in two day total sales. Super Mario 3D World is not quite the winner of the week, however, as it still gets its hindquarters handed to it on a silver platter by Call of Duty: Ghosts for the Xbox One, which takes the lead this week in the US (495,223). Aside from that, Super Mario 3D World finished behind Call of Duty: Ghosts for the Xbox 360 (296K), The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds for the Nintendo 3DS (295K), and Battlefield 4 for the Xbox One (253K).

It’s a slightly different story in the UK for the latest entry to The Legend of Zelda franchise, with the game seemingly managing to pull off a meager 30,547 while Xbox One takes advantage of its currently non-existent competition, pulling in nearly 400,000 in total software sales this week. Not a single Wii U game is to be seen until way down low in the list at 37th with New Super Luigi U, but this is presumed to change after the launch of Super Mario 3D World.

We already know how it is in Japan, with Super Mario 3D World getting 1-UPed by Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII for the PS3. Nonetheless, the game still manages to make it over the 100K mark, leaving a couple other new games for the Nintendo 3DS in the dust.

In comparison to past The Legend of Zelda games on Nintendo’s handhelds in the US, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds debuts higher than Phantom Hourglass (199K) and Spirit Tracks (188K). This may or may not make the A Link Between Worlds have the best debut of a Zelda handheld game in the US.

In comparison to past 3D Mario action-adventure games in the US, Super Mario 3D World does not sell better than the Galaxy duo on the Wii (527K and 705K respectively) or Super Mario 3D Land for the Nintendo 3DS (303K), though it does mange to outperform Super Mario 64‘s debut on the Nintendo DS (223K) by about 20K.

So what of the hardware sales? Well, this is Wii U’s highest performing week in the US since the week ending December 19th, when it sold 60k, outputting a modest, 49K (up 61%). To compare, when the Nintendo 3DS received its first major 3D Mario action-adventure game, Super Mario 3D Land, hardware sales went up 20% to 95K. While 3D Land sold more on its debut than did 3D World for the Wii U, Super Mario 3D Mario evidently did much more for Wii U hardware sales than it did for the Nintendo 3DS.

Equally as interesting to note, along with its software PlayStation 4 hardware sales have took quite the dive, 91% on the charts, down 83 and 91 per cent respectively (2.6 to 0.4 million for software and 1.1 to 0.09 million for hardware). While this can be attributed to the system’s lack of availability at the moment, it is worth noting, as Wii U only dropped 28% on its second week to 0.3 million for hardware sales and 54% to 0.6 million for software sales. Perhaps many are jumping the gun on predicting the future based off first week sales, but all will be revealed in time.

With the way Nintendo has been marketing both the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, future encouraging sales numbers for the two platforms in both the hardware and software category may not be very surprising.

Were you a part of Super Mario 3D World and/or The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between World’s launch day sales? Let us know in the comment section below!

Please note that this information is provided by VGChartz, and it is possible that some of the sales figures may not be completely accurate.