Announcing the debut-week sales of the Nintendo Wii U game console in North America, Reggie Fils-Aime - Nintendo's American corporate president - said that the November
18-launched game system was "effectively sold out at retail" last week.

Noting that the demand for the Wii U is "quite strong," Fils-Aime - citing the retailers' internal Nintendo sales data - revealed that the launch-week sales of Nintendo's new game system in the US stood at over 400,000 units.

Despite the fact that the first-week sales figures of the Wii U show that the game system is flying off the store shelves, the demand for the system is clearly much lower than that of the November 2006-launched original Wii console, which reportedly sold more than 600,000 units in the Americas during the first eight days of its release.

The comparison of the debut-week sales figures of the Wii and new Wii U is significant, especially in the wake of the fact that the launch of both the Nintendo consoles overlapped with Black Friday.

Nonetheless, pointing out that the sales of the Wii U has largely been limited because of Nintendo's ability to get the system to the stores, Fils-Aime told CNET: "Retailers are also doing their best to get the product to store shelves, but as soon as product hits retail, they're selling out immediately."