Except nobody owns the Wii U now, so those games I mentioned can't do shit on their own. When you've got people who will buy a Wii U for Mario 3D World or Donkey Kong or Mario Kart or what-have-you, then the casual support it's currently getting will finally start to sell. It's gonna start to matter for the system. Tell me this: how do you expect holiday casual stuff to fare in 2014 compared to 2013? Do you not expect Skylanders '14 to be bigger than this year's game?
Because seriously, are we sure the Wii getting franchises like Call of Duty contributed much to its success? People freaking out over the loss of that kind of support next year make it sound like it's so central to a Nintendo console's success nowadays. This isn't the Vita, the Wii could have lost Call of Duty and yearly sports games and it would have changed what to its lifetime install base exactly?
Assuming a majority of Nintendo's announced games release in 2014, I don't see how it's going to be such a bad year. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the only commercially notable 3DS releases in 2012 were Kid Icarus: Uprising, Mario & Sonic at the Olympics Games, Mario Tennis Open, New Super Mario Bros. 2, Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask and Paper Mario. Six games, and it's not like those were all massive system-selling games.
Currently announced non-2013 commercially notable Wii U games: Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros., Yoshi, Zelda U, and you may want to count half of Wii Fit U and half of Wii Sports Club. Doesn't look that bad of a line-up in comparison to me.
Why do I think Zelda U will be out in 2014? From
Game Informer:
So I'm not seeing a big problem for the Wii U there. 2014 is Nintendo's to screw up, but they have enough at their disposal to sell considerably better than this year, no matter how many FIFA's and Call of Duty's and Assassin's Creed's it may or may not get.
Did Nintendo even have any games this year to sell? No I think you're right, I don't think they've gotten decent numbers from anything this year so far, but, like I said above, third-party casual stuff is never going to carry a console all on their shoulders. They need Nintendo to have sold more systems to thrive. I expect the numbers for those kinds of games to be significantly up next year after the stuff Nintendo is releasing on it.