Wii U has record-setting sales for December

Nintendo's Wii U closed out 2014 with its biggest month of sales in its history. While specific numbers weren't revealed, Nintendo did say the Wii U "established new benchmarks for hardware and software sales in a single month in December."

Nintendo also revealed that the month's sales helped total hardware and software sales in 2014 increase by more than 29 percent and more than 75 percent, respectively, over sales in 2013.

“Wii U had its strongest year yet thanks to the highly anticipated software lineup and the introduction of the amiibo platform,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “Fans can anticipate another strong year for 2015, especially with more highly anticipated games like Splatoon and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D, as well as New Nintendo 3DS XL, arriving in the first half of 2015.”

Getting into specifics, Nintendo noted that Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U sold over 1.7 million physical and digital units and 1.3 million physical and digital units,respectively, in 2014. Total sales of amiibo figures in 2014 "are nearly twice the sales of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U," the company added.

Given the slew of anticipated blockbuster titles that launched towards the end of last year — like Super Smash Bros. — I'm not surprised to hear that December was the system's biggest month. But I'm impressed nonetheless, especially with all the gloom and doom reports we saw early on.

Looking to keep up the momentum, Nintendo has a number of exciting Wii U games due out in 2015, including Splatoon, Yoshi's Woolly World, Mario Party 10, and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse.