Mario Kart 8 Drives Massive Wii U Sales, 3DS Is Number Two Console on NPD

Official NPD US May data is coming out later today, but Nintendo is getting ahead of the announcements with some good news: Wii U sales are up over 85% over April and over 90% over May of last year.

Part of that success was likely driven by anticipation for Mario Kart 8, which had immensely successful sales on its own. According to Nintendo NPD data for all of the US, Mario Kart 8 came in as the "No. 3 best-selling software SKU in May." That's even more impressive when taking into account that the game launched on May 30, so it only factored into two days of the NPD's month-long report. Nintendo reported earlier that Mario Kart 8 was the Wii U's fastest-selling game so far, with 1.2 million sales shortly after launch.

The 3DS continues to show strong performance as well, coming in as the number two best-selling console for May.

Nintendo has had a rocky start to the beginning of the year, but it garnered a lot of goodwill last week at E3, and you can catch up on all the big announcements from their Nintendo Direct presentation as well as a list of all the new games revealed at the show. And GameSpot editor Carolyn Petit made the argument that Nintendo came out as the overall winner at E3.

We'll have even more NPD data when it becomes available later this afternoon.

Justin Haywald is a senior editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @JustinHaywald Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email [email protected]