It hasn't given us any joy to report on what seems to be a nonstop stream of bad news for Nintendo in recent months. So it's a nice change of pace to be able to report on a bona fide success story for Nintendo and the Wii U, in the form of 2 million sales for Mario Kart 8 less than a month after its late May release.

Nintendo announced the result at its annual shareholder meeting, IGN reports , where attendees also reconfirmed Satoru Iwata's position as president of the company. The new sales number comes after reported sales of 1.2 million units for the game in its first weekend on store shelves worldwide.

That's a healthy sales pace for any console game, but it's especially heartening given the limited reported sales base of Wii U owners, which was sitting at just 6.14 million worldwide at the end of March. For context, it took Super Mario 3D World just over four months after its late 2013 release to reach 2.17 million worldwide sales, and the best-selling game on the Wii U, New Super Mario Bros. U, had sold 4.16 million copies worldwide as of the end of March, according to Nintendo.

What's unclear at the moment is whether Mario Kart 8's success is coming mainly from existing Wii U owners or from people buying new hardware to play the game. Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said that Wii U sales quadrupled in the week following Mario Kart 8, but it's unknown what level they were at the week prior or if the sales increase lasted throughout the month. Fils-Aime added that 18 percent of all Wii U owners purchased the game in its opening weekend, a ratio well ahead of previous Mario Kart games and one that would suggest worldwide Wii U sales at around 6.66 million as of a month ago. We'll know more when NPD releases its June sales report for the US and when Nintendo reports its quarterly results next month.

Nintendo is counting onandlater this year—to really kickstart hardware sales for the Wii U and re-attract third-party publishers to the system. "We're confident that if we can [grow the installed base] through first-party software, like, like, then the third-party developers will follow because then they'll see there's a large enough installed base that it's worth their investment to bring their games to our platform," Nintendo of America Senior Director of Communication Charlie Scibetta told Ars in an interview earlier this month . "So it's our job to grow that installed base to make it more attractive for them to come to our platform."

The last console Mario Kart game, Mario Kart Wii, has sold more than 35.5 million copies, making it one of the best-selling video games of all time. The Mario Kart series as a whole had sold over 100 million units even before Mario Kart 8's debut.