A source close to NPD has confirmed to IGN that 222,700 Wii U consoles were sold in the United States in November.

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The last official Wii U sales number reported by Nintendo was 3.91 million worldwide as of late October. Combined with this new 222,000 and weekly sales in Japan and Europe since the beginning of November, we estimate that Nintendo has sold approximately 4.3 million Wii U consoles worldwide to date.Nintendo previously announced that it's aiming to sell 9 million Wii Us worldwide during its 2014 fiscal year (which concludes on March 31, 2014). Nintendo sold 160,000 systems in the first quarter and 300,000 units in the second quarter. Added to this new 222,000, this means Nintendo would need to sell an additional 8.3 million Wii Us before the end of March in order to reach its goal, or between 2.0-2.1 million consoles per month in December, January, February and March.Earlier this month, analysts predicted that Nintendo " will likely miss " its profit goals for Wii U. Market research firm DFC Intelligence also recently predicted that Wii U will sell 25 percent as well as Wii In response to yesterday’s NPD report , Nintendo simply said that “sales of Wii U hardware increased by more than 340 percent over sales in October,” but declined to provide specific sales figures officially. Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America executive vice president of sales and marketing, commented on NPD results by noting that, “in looking at these results, two things are indisputable: Our hardware is gaining momentum at the exact right time and our software catalog is stronger than ever.”IGN spoke with Jesse Divnich, VP of Insights at EEDAR, about Wii U's current fortunes. Given potential supply limitations for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, we asked if Nintendo could see a boost this holiday season. "Even with the hardware constraints of the new hardware, Nintendo has their own battles to contend with but certainly they are not operating under favorable conditions with all the visibility and marketing the new platforms are getting," Divnich said.When asked if a hardware price drop could be a potential solution, Divnich commented, "Hardware price drops should always be a last resort. They are permanent and have considerable impacts on the bottom line. That being said, price drops do increase hardware sales and both retailers and consumers will always pressure for lower price points, but it may not always be conducive to a healthy bottom line. I believe if Nintendo could drop the price without negatively impacting their bottom-line they would have. Once conditions are right, they are likely to drop the price again."Wii U launched in November 2012 in North America and Europe, followed by a December 2012 launch in Japan. PlayStation 4, which launched on November 15, 2013 in the U.S., has sold 2.1 million units globally as of the beginning of this month, and Xbox One, which launched worldwide a week later, sold 2 million consoles globally in 18 days It’s worth noting that some of Nintendo’s biggest franchises will come in the first quarter of 2014, including Mario Kart 8 in Spring 2014 and Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze on February 21 . Additional Wii U titles on the horizon include the next Super Smash Bros. as well as a new Zelda, which is expected to debut at E3 2014 "We should anticipate a small uptick in hardware sales as Nintendo’s first party software has shown the ability to increase hardware sales," Divnich commented.We’ve reached out to Nintendo regarding Wii U’s sales to date and whether or not the target of nine million is expected to be revised. We’ll update this story with any comment we receive.

Editor's note: This article originally stated that Nintendo was aiming to have nine million Wii U consoles sold to date by March 2014. In fact, Nintendo's previously-announced goal is actually to sell nine million Wii U systems within the 2014 fiscal year, which runs from April 1, 2013 to March 31, 2014. The text and headline above have been updated to reflect this change, and we regret the error.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following @garfep on Twitter or garfep on IGN.