Since it is undoubtedly difficult for VGChartz to compile completely accurate sales figures, the numbers presented should only be taken as possibilities and not the real figures that the companies themselves have access to.
That being said, in the week prior to Christmas (ending on December 21) Nintendo was able to sell 319,860 units of the Wii U, compared to Microsoft which sold 307,366 units of the Xbox One.
Neither of these game systems where anywhere near the most popular during the holiday season however, as the Nintendo 3DS and Sony PS4 absolutely dominated the competition with 1.07 million and 656,655 sales respectively.
Interestingly enough, the Xbox 360 still brought in enough sales for Microsoft in order to push itself into the third spot just behind the PS4 and 3DS, both of which are much newer than the 360.
It is no surprise that the Wii U has been able to bring at least a marginal increase in sales compared to its predecessor, particularly with popular game releases like Super Mario 3D World. A marginal increase in sales however, is far from the same as beating a new and popular system like the Xbox One.
This is how it goes. We expect Sony’s and Microsoft’s new consoles to thrive over the next three years, with cumulative worldwide sales of 37.7 million PS4 and 29 million Xbox One consoles by year-end 2016. We do not expect Nintendo’s Wii U to fare as well, with cumulative sales of under 20 million by 2016. – Michael Pachter, Wedbush analysts, speaking with Forbes
While it may have found some success during this holiday season on the hardware side, Wedbush predicted that software sales for the Wii and Wii U would fall 9%, though the official figures are not yet available.
VGChartz may not be the most reliable source when it comes to concrete numbers but they also do not claim to provide 100% accurate stats, so we cannot fault them on that. In fact, these sales numbers (despite the humor associated with them) line up without many issues with the predictions put out prior to the holiday season.