Wii U Worldwide Sales Pass 10 Million Units

Sales of the Wii U have surpassed 10 million units, according to figures released by Nintendo.

The company's latest earnings report states the Wii U sold 470,000 units between April and June 2015. Although this is just short of Nintendo's projections--and is down from the same period in 2014, when it sold 500,000 units--the figure does push life-to-date sales of the Wii U to 10.1 million.

Currently, the Wii U is most popular in the Americas, where Nintendo reports it has managed to sell 4.8 million units to date. Japan, meanwhile, accounts for 2.4 million units. 2.6 million unit sales were attributed to other territories.

Looking ahead, Nintendo has forecasted sales of the Wii U for April to March 2016 will be around the 3.4 million unit mark.

The Wii U was launched in November 2012, followed by Sony's PlayStation 4, a year later. In March 2015, Sony announced the PS4 had sold through more than 20.2 million units and labelled its latest console the "fastest and strongest" growing hardware in all of PlayStation history.

Microsoft has not released recent sales figures for the Xbox One.

Nintendo confirmed its next home console is codenamed the NX in March 2015, but little is known about the hardware. The company has said it does not plan to fully reveal the hardware until 2016.

At the time of its announcement, Nintendo said the NX represents a "brand-new concept," but didn't elaborate further.

A report has indicated that Nintendo could begin assembly of the NX in October, as the company has signed a contract with Foxcon Electronics and wants to begin pilot assembly on the hardware by October "at the latest."

Nintendo has said it will continue to support the Wii U and 3DS after the NX is launched.

"NX is a new platform, so the installed base will have to be built up from zero," it said. "When NX is launched, there already will be a certain volume of Nintendo 3DS and Wii U hardware widely existing in the market, so from a software business perspective, it would be highly inefficient to stop releasing titles for Nintendo 3DS or Wii U right after the launch of NX."

The company has been adamant that the NX is not a simple replacement for the Wii U and 3DS.