Hyrule Warriors has lit a fire under the Wii U's arse in Japan

The Legend of Zelda spin-off Hyrule Warriors is going gangbusters in Japan, giving the Wii U a whopping sales boost.

Hyrule Warriors released in Japan on August 14, just one day before the Bon festival. Although we don't yet have concrete numbers, there are indications that it's not only selling strongly but is something of a system seller.

Over the Bon festival period, Japanese retailer Tsutaya recorded Wii U software sales four times that of the same time in 2013, as reported by Japanese blogs and translated by DualShockers

Tsutaya is generally considered a fairly reliable indicator of retail trends in Japan at large, so this huge boost in software sales is great news for the Wii U - especially as it accompanied a hardware sales spike, too.

That said, there wasn't a big new release in Japan within weeks of the Bon festival last year; July's releases came mid-month, and The Wonderful 101 didn't release until more than a week later. So it's not surprising that Wii U software sales have gone up, year-on-year.

But we really shouldn't discount Hyrule Warriors. Even though the Obon period is traditionally pretty dead at Japanese retail, but Tsutaya said Hyrule Warriors is performing well in spite of that. The new exclusive hit number three on Tsutaya's multi-platform sales charts, in fact.

Hyrule Warriors is a crossover between The Legend of Zelda and Dynasty Warriors. The Dynasty Warriors family of franchises is hugely popular and successful in Japan, so the performance of this latest venture is not much of a surprise. Let's hope it's what the Wii U needs to get it off the ground in Japan - and hopefully that success will help drive it to better performance internationally, too. Fight on, Nintendo!

Hyrule Warriors is due in the west towards the end of September, by the way.