While it's no secret that the Wii U has had less than stellar sales since its release last year, sales data from Japan this week show that the system can still sell impressive numbers.

According to a report from Media Create (via Gematsu), the Wii U sold 38,802 units this week in Japan, compared to just 2,598 the previous week. That's a staggering 1,500% increase.

The spike is primarily attributed to the release of Wii Party U, which sold over 37,000 copies and debuted in as the sixth highest selling piece of software in Japan last week. Number one, was of course, Pokemon X and Y, which sold 162,347 this week and 2,731,470 copies the week before).

The hardware sales chart for this week and last is below.

Hardware This week's sales Last week's sales 3DS XL 58,627 69,001 Wii U 38,802 2,598 3DS 29,749 40,507 PlayStation Vita 27,618 24,513 PlayStation 3 11,148 11,460 PSP 3,680 3,807 Wii 477 742 Xbox 360 328 351

Wii Party U was released on October 31 in Japan and October 25 in the US and EU.