During GameStop’s Q2 2014 earnings conference call, the company’s Mike Mauler mentioned that Mario Kart 8 “helped drive a more than threefold increase in Wii U hardware sales versus Q2 2013.” A couple of higher-ups were asked to further discuss the outlook for Wii U later on.

President Tony Bartel started off by stating:

You know, we’ve been very consistent, every time we’re asked about the Wii U here, that really what they needed was two things. They needed strong first party titles, which we think that they are getting, and they also needed to do a better job of explaining exactly what the connected [unintelligible], as we like to call it, how you actually use that. I think that they’re going to do a great job on both of those.
Clearly, they’ve come out with some nice announcements at gamescom. Preorders really spiked when they came out on that. So we’re very excited about that.