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[Laguna]

No other way but up...

I hear the same thing for Vita many months now. (ah right I know, Wii U has Nintendo behind it)

It´s kind of surprising that no one is calling you out in this, the difference between both arguments are important, while on one side Vita was supposed to flourish on niche games, ports and the hope of getting Monster Hunter someday and then the dream of a new IP that will substitute or rival MH (in popularity), On the other side WiiU actually is guaranteed to get entries of million selling franchises. It´s obvious that NSMB alone can´t push the hardware alone, neitherless it already sold half a million units and looking at the charts it is still selling decently on weekly basis, with a more defined software library it will become a million seller. But to deny that upcoming system sellers, some of them even million-sellers won´t move hardware is really awkward.

 

[Nirolak]

I wonder, would it really make much sense to release anything right now? Even if Nintendo released Pikmin 3 or Wonderful 101 next week, sales would just rise for a week before going back to the current level. Wouldn't these games just be wasted that way? Wouldn't it make more sense to let the Wii U rot for the upcoming months, until Nintendo has a solid line-up ready? Let's say starting this Summer Nintendo releases Pikmin 3, Wii Fit U, Wonderful 101, Wii U Party, Bayonetta 2, Mario Kart 7, Mario Kart Universe and Wind Waker HD -- that would give them two solid releases a month. Wouldn't that help Wii U's mindshare a lot more?

Of course, they could release a game every two months instead, but in the meantime people are likely to forget about the console again, so... what would be the point of it? Q1 and Q2 would look disastrous financially, but there's a good chance that this is going to happen either way.

They also could to retail the favor to cut the Basic model completely and replace it with the Premium bundle for the same price (and bundle Nintendoland with it in Japan too). Yeah, Nintendo's making a loss with each sold Wii U, I know. But I don't see why they wouldn't be able to sell the Premium back for the same price. The additional storage and all of the included plastic crap are literally worth a dollar or two in production, while including a pre-installed copy of Nintendoland costs them nothing at all (sure, they would like to sell it, but they just have to face the reality that people aren't interested).

The balancing act here really revolves around how you support the rest of the year if you release all your games in a two month span. I mean, it would be impressive for two months, but then we might just enter another 6+ month drought.

This is a large part of why third parties are so important. When you have 100 developers working on your platform instead of 10, you can actually fill up the vast majority of months in the year while still having some spectacularly packed months during times like the holidays.

 

[Nirolak]

Tomodachi Collection April 18, dated a week ago.

That seems like a good choice, since people will be off and can either really get the sharing going, or build up a lot of content to share when they're back in school.

 

[airmangataosenai]

Yeah, what was the difference after a price drop? 3-4k? That doesn't sound good.

Reports of a handful of retailers breaking the street date isn't the same as a full price drop. If that was the standard then Wii U sold even worse in January with those $250 fire sales online.

 

[donny2112]

With no software in sight until 5 weeks from now, how low are we expecting the Wii U to drop? Below 8k is likely, but what's the floor? 5k?

I don't think it matters, at this point. 2K. Why not. How low it drops isn't nearly as important as if they can turn it around before being permanently written off as a viable console.

 

[deviljho]

These are excellent charts. Thanks. The Wii U still needs to build some software momentum though...

All charts launch-aligned.

Note, since this draws only from the top 10 it does not represent smaller titles.
e.g., software sales of zero are assumed if the console has no games in the top 10.

Tally of the number of titles for that platform in the top 20 for each week.
I can't find the top 20 for PS3's second week. It has been assumed as zero.

Feel free to criticize or point out mistakes.

 

[Baconsammy]

Reports of a handful of retailers breaking the street date isn't the same as a full price drop. If that was the standard then Wii U sold even worse in January with those $250 fire sales online.

Oh, so the early drops weren't universal? Didn't know that. I guess next week will present a better picture on what Japan thinks of the Vita.

 

[Nirolak]

pokemon similarly feels like 'oh shit, we should have done something like this from the start' given how they're not going to allow the 6 months it usually takes for localization.

they really should expand treehouse, or get in good with smaller publishers and have games localized worldwide more often. there's really no reason why xenoblade 2 shouldn't come out next year in america if it comes out in japan at the same time.

problem with nintendo is that they're so conservative, that even though they go lax on some of their policies, they have a huge host of problems still there. the company needs a big shakeup if they ever hope to get any meaningful support.

Honestly I totally agree.

90%+ of Nintendo's releases should be global since they have about the same amount of pull in any given region.

I get delaying something like Xenoblade 2 if it releases in December in Japan since that would be horrendous for the West, but for a company like Nintendo this should be far and few between, and even then, it should be out in like January-February immediately after.

They should really sit down and just re-evaluate every single business practice they have, ask both developers/publishers and consumers panels for feedback on what they feel could be better about it, and start acting across as many as they can at once.

 

[AzaK]

They've already announced updates so I doubt they want to do anything else with the OS until then.

Sure but it'll be something like 5-6 months after release and the thing shouldn't have been so slow to start with.

 

[walking fiend]

The posts in these threads in few months will be interesting to read, in Christmas, we will have a good laugh. I don't really, like in really really, don't get how people believe there's even a small chance that Nintendo allows Wii U to end up in a situation similar to Vita; which apparently is what people are expecting.

Nintendo is basically doing what Ubisoft did with Rayman Legends: allocating its resources to maximize their financial status; but people don't want to accept it:

- For now its obvious they are capitalizing on 3DS, it has 'a lot' of games scheduled for the next few months.

- Wii U hardware is not that profitable for now, so moving hardware without software is not that much of advantage for them; 3DS on the other hand, is apparently selling with a very high profit margin, considering how cheap they were over holidays.

- These months are the slowest months of the year; so spending a lot of money for marketing that can increase the sales 'now', will not eventually result in much anyway


---
I guess Nintendo is saving its money to promote Wii U once they are ready to release a few major software for it; probably by the time Wii Fit U and Pikmin hit the market, and also they will probably have some 3rd party announcements at that point too; but that's not 'really' that important. Unless exclusive titles, I doubt multiplats will be any significant help to the Wii U anyway, no matter how many of them are released.

 

[AzaK]

History has also shown that:

1: Hardware bumps are only temporary when you can't create momentum through a consistent release schedule.

2: You can't have a consistent release schedule without proper 3rd party support.

I assume they're holding all their stuff back to make 2nd half regular wrt releases. This drought isn't good enough and is rather offensive IMO. 'Thanks for buying our console. Sucker!'

 

[deviljho]

The posts in these threads in few months will be interesting to read, in Christmas, we will have a good laugh. I don't really, like in really really, don't get how people believe there's even a small chance that Nintendo allows Wii U to end up in a situation similar to Vita; which apparently is what people are expecting.

Nintendo is basically doing what Ubisoft did with Rayman Legends: allocating its resources to maximize their financial status; but people don't want to accept it:

- For now its obvious they are capitalizing on 3DS, it has 'a lot' of games scheduled for the next few months.

- Wii U hardware is not that profitable for now, so moving hardware without software is not that much of advantage for them

- These months are the slowest months of the year; so spending a lot of money for marketing that can increase the sales 'now', will not eventually result in much anyway

I don't doubt that Nintendo will "bring it." But you have to also acknowledge that many people lack confidence in the future of the Wii U with respect to an appealing software library. Lack of confidence is fleeting, however, since it can be swept away easily... except that we are all waiting for Nintendo to reveal more about how they will support the platform for 5-6 years with games.

I agree that they are focusing on the 3DS, and that's important, but they launched 1 year early with Wii U and have yet to build software momentum to capitalize on that head start. I'm more optimistic than most, and think the platform will be fine, but you can't exactly say that people are unwarranted for being skeptical.

 

[Gonzo The Great]

EMy point is that people are complaining about these things every week acting as if Nintendo has suddenly pulled something to attempt to swing it that week and has failed. We knew this gap would be hard, and that sales would dry up, but people are just acting like it's a massive shock.

The negativity won't stop until things change, and deservedly so. Nintendo promised to avoid another software drought and yet the drought we're currently experiencing is worse than any that came before it. Consumers don't like being lied to.

 

[schuelma]

It´s kind of surprising that no one is calling you out in this, the difference between both arguments are important, while on one side Vita was supposed to flourish on niche games, ports and the hope of getting Monster Hunter someday and then the dream of a new IP that will substitute or rival MH (in popularity), On the other side WiiU actually is guaranteed to get entries of million selling franchises. It´s obvious that NSMB alone can´t push the hardware alone, neitherless it already sold half a million units and looking at the charts it is still selling decently on weekly basis, with a more defined software library it will become a million seller. But to deny that upcoming system sellers, some of them even million-sellers won´t move hardware is really awkward.

His view is set, not sure what else to say. Arguing seems fruitless right now.

 

[maquiladora]

I didn't expect Vita to outsell Wii U until after the lower Vita price date....
I wonder why it got a boost? People hyped for Soul Sacrifice?

 

[BlackJace]

No other way but up...

I hear the same thing for Vita many months now. (ah right I know, Wii U has Nintendo behind it)

Not to say that the Wii U situation exactly parallels the 3DS's, but the combination of a price drop plus quality software drops resulted in much better sales for the system.

I'm kind of baffled at why saying that the sales should pick up when software that normally moves Nintendo units arrive is an overly optimistic assessment.

 

[QaaQer]

Developers would love to work on Vita? Why exactly? If I was a developer right now and wasn't money constrained I would want to work with the most powerful hardware available to me and that certainly isn't Vita. Developers want to work on Vita, but business men stop them sounds like a projection of Inafune as to why he's making a game on a failing system.

and the most powerful dedicated handheld is?

 

[Nirolak]

I didn't expect Vita to outsell Wii U until after the lower Vita price date....
I wonder why it got a boost? People hyped for Soul Sacrifice?

A few shops lowered early.

 

[frankie_baby]

I didn't expect Vita to outsell Wii U until after the lower Vita price date....
I wonder why it got a boost? People hyped for Soul Sacrifice?

As already stated some shops dropped the price early

 

[saichi]

This is a paraphrased interview from the Twitter guy.

"It's a plus that people think Soul Sacrifice is copying Monster Hunter. Because they have an interest in the title. We took the good parts from MH, but you will feel the differences when you play. Because we know you will see the difference, we have confidently taken the good parts from MH. You'll understand when you play."

Also

"The reason that real software isn't coming out for Vita is because business men are making all the decisions. If you are a creator, there is no question you would choose to make games for Vita. Because that is where the real interesting stuff is. If the games are interesting, the hardware will sell."

what else is he gonna say?

"We tried to copy MH in order to sell the game. Hopefully we copied the good parts of MH that make people buy the game.

And I just developed the game for VITA because I got paid a lot more to do it than making a game on 3DS. It's actually a shitty platform with no future."

Kamiya agrees with you.

haha

 

[BriBri]

I don't need am expert to tell me that Metal Gear and Animal Crossing did well this week and Wii U did poor but I do need to be updated on Dragon Quest, is it far off course in reaching DQ 4 & 5 remake levels?

 

[Spiegel]

His view is set, not sure what else to say. Arguing seems fruitless right now.

It is set because unless Nintendo couples a 10000Y price drop with Mario 3D + Mario Kart and 10/15 third party games (not all necessarily exclusive) to be released before and after these two, any posible bump is going to be anecdotal.

And seeing how third parties are clearly avoiding the WiiU this is not something that seems to be going to happen.

 

[wrowa]

March is the jumping off point. I know it release schedules for Japan are a bit different, but they need to start building momentum. If you wait until the Fall to start, you've wasted an entire year. They need to start building momentum worldwide starting in March with the new games. Expecting things to go at maximum warp with the flick of a switch is not realistic. I'm not saying they should release games early... They are sitting on a lot of cash and they should spend it wisely during rainy days. They need to invest heavily in the platform before consumers do, and everyone is doing the "wait and see" for games and Wii U in general.. Marketing comes after games. They don't need a price cut yet.

But that's exactly the point. You don't build up momentum by releasing two games in the span of three to four months. That way you are just throwing the games into the garbage bin, since everyone will already have moved on again as soon as the next game releases. You build up momentum by having a constant stream of software -- however, Nintendo just doesn't have that for the first half of this year. You can look at it from whatever angle you want, there's just no way to change that. It doesn't make sense to hope for a surprise announcement of games that will come out in Q2, it's time to face the reality that Nintendo has nothing ready that would make any difference.

Regarding the price... Well, there's no way to absolutely know right now. However, if there's one thing I haven't heard so far among casual or core gamers alike, it's that the Wii U is priced fair. Nintendo might make a loss, but most people seem to perceive the Wii U as too expensive for what it's offering -- and these people won't change their mind just because the company makes a loss (since they don't care, as simple as that). Also keep in mind that I proposed more of a hidden price cut, which wouldn;t actually make much of a difference for Nintendo's financials. The most drastic part would be that they would have to give up on the idea of Nintendoland selling millions in Japan -- but I think that ship has sailed anyway.

The balancing act here really revolves around how you support the rest of the year if you release all your games in a two month span. I mean, it would be impressive for two months, but then we might just enter another 6+ month drought.

This is a large part of why third parties are so important. When you have 100 developers working on your platform instead of 10, you can actually fill up the vast majority of months in the year while still having some spectacularly packed months during times like the holidays.

Well, I'm speaking about delaying the few Q1/Q2 releases they have until Summer, so that they are able to have a constant stream of games coming out starting Q3 until the end of the year. With the exception of Bayonetta 2, I'm certain that all of the games I listed are definitely targeted to release this year, so there's nothing Nintendo would take away from their 2014 line-up (2014 is another problem altogether, but having a successful holiday 2013 is probably most important at this point).

They would have 8 first party games this way, that's enough for 4 months of 2 games a month. And that's excluding any third party games or not yet announced smaller 1st party games. I think that would be a very respectable line-up for Q3 and Q4 and the only chance Nintendo is actually able to recover from the current situation.

However, I think it's likely that Nintendo will delay their Q2 games (so, Pikmin and Wii Fit U?) as far as possible without actually pishing those out of Q2. I wouldn't be surprised at all if both games will be released in June.

 

[Psycho_Mantis]

It´s kind of surprising that no one is calling you out in this, the difference between both arguments are important, while on one side Vita was supposed to flourish on niche games, ports and the hope of getting Monster Hunter someday and then the dream of a new IP that will substitute or rival MH (in popularity), On the other side WiiU actually is guaranteed to get entries of million selling franchises. It´s obvious that NSMB alone can´t push the hardware alone, neitherless it already sold half a million units and looking at the charts it is still selling decently on weekly basis, with a more defined software library it will become a million seller. But to deny that upcoming system sellers, some of them even million-sellers won´t move hardware is really awkward.

Ummmm....ever heard of the console called Gamecube. Plenty of Nintendo's "million sellers" were on that console and look at its hardware sales. I personally think Nintendo is heading down the same road but nots to late to change.

It seems neither the Japanese people (or European and American) or Japanese third parties see WiiU as a next gen platform. Nintendo cannot simultaneously support the WiiU ans 3DS without causing droughts in software which is what we are seeing now.

One huge factor is the PS4 and PS3. If Sony dramatically reduces the price of the PS3 or if the PS4 is able to get the big third party titles and GT in its launch window then the WiiU will be seriously dead. Right now that does not seem to be the case (though Sony has not announced all its titles yet).

Anyway the WiiU doing so bad does confirm one thing: there is a market for PS4.

 

[ASIS]

Dem Wii U sales.

I seriously wonder what Nintendo is thinking right now. selling below 10k a week is just... Even the Vita outsold it! My god.

 

[FreedomFighter]

Isn't that exactly what you're doing? I wouldn't get moist for a 3D Mario.

Don't 3D Mario games traditionally get outsold by 2D Mario games?

I'm not talking about what I *want* to happen, I'm talking about what I'm pretty sure will be the case. YOU wouldn't get moist for a new 3D Mario game but judging from the sales of Galaxy 1 & 2, and SM3DL... uhm, yeah.

And yes, 2D Mario has always outsold 3D Mario...

 

[schuelma]

And seeing how third parties are clearly avoiding the WiiU this is not something that seems to be going to happen.

So you believe Nintendo will never be able to sustain any sort of sales bump?

 

[BlackJace]

Ummmm....ever heard of the console called Gamecube. Plenty of Nintendo's "million sellers" were on that console and look at its hardware sales. I personally think Nintendo is heading down the same road but nots to late to change.

It seems neither the Japanese people (or European and American) or Japanese third parties see WiiU as a next gen platform. Nintendo cannot simultaneously support the WiiU ans 3DS without causing droughts in software which is what we are seeing now.

One huge factor is the PS4 and PS3. If Sony dramatically reduces the price of the PS3 or if the PS4 is able to get the big third party titles and GT in its launch window then the WiiU will be seriously dead. Right now that does not seem to be the case (though Sony has not announced all its titles yet).

Anyway the WiiU doing so bad does confirm one thing: there is a market for PS4.

Could you explain this? I'm not quite getting this.

 

[airmangataosenai]

I am very, very curious about how DQX will perform. What would be considered a disappointment for the launch sales? Sub-100k? It's the last substantial third party release that we firmly know about, it bombing could lead to a lot of the unannounced games people are counting on to be quietly cancelled/moved to other hardware.

Going by the release calendar it should easily premiere at number 1 with no major releases that week or the week before on any other platform.

 

[Psycho_Mantis]

Could you explain this? I'm not quite getting this.

Third parties are not on the WiiU train. They seem to be on the PS4 train. With the PS4 getting decent third party support it can at least get decent sales.

If the WiiU had third parties locked down on consoles PS4 would be pretty much irrelevant as Sony's first party does not do well in Japan.

We saw this with the Vita and we could of seen this for the PS4 too in my opinion but the lack of support for the WiiU to me justifies the existence of the PS4.

 

[Spiegel]

So you believe Nintendo will never be able to sustain any sort of sales bump?

They need a continuous stream of games or they need a new cultural phenomenon similar to what happened with motion gaming.

Take these two away and you have a Gamecube.

This is not to say that I think the WiiU is going to end selling only 4M, but hoping that Mario 3D and Mario Kart are going to save the console is being foolish.

We can get into the maybes, maybe Nintendo is going to buy Square and Namco and then they'll have games to sustain momentum, but the reality is that the announced third party support is zero and companies have little incentive to develop for the WiiU. And this is the recipe for disaster (Vita).

 

[BlackJace]

Third parties are not on the WiiU train. They seem to be on the PS4 train. With the PS4 getting decent third party support it can at least get decent sales.

If the WiiU had third parties locked down on consoles PS4 would be pretty much irrelevant as Sony's first party does not do well in Japan.

We saw this with the Vita and we could of seen this for the PS4 too in my opinion but the lack of support for the WiiU to me justifies the existence of the PS4.

The PS4 was going to exist no matter how the Wii U performed.

 

[Hoodbury]

Dem Wii U sales.

I seriously wonder what Nintendo is thinking right now.

Ambassador program?

 

[maverick40]

Ambassador program?

How will that fix the situation?

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I think that's the point. Although it's probably way too late for a cross release.

Not that there's any indication they're interested, but how difficult could it be to do a pretty straight Monster Hunter-like HD port, given most of the year before release and some spare people to port the engine?

This is factually wrong

It's reeeal easy to forget the software mess 3DS was in, and it's far worse than Wii U. Wii U at least HAS two strong-selling games out at launch with decent legs. 3DS was a wasteland.

3DS had fewer high sellers, but way more mid sellers. It had 6 launch games that sold over 100k (from 6 publishers)

It took some of those a long time to reach 100K, though, but even looking at the situation a few months after launch at least there were those games sitting in the 50-100K range, whereas anything on Wii U past the top three is lucky to make an appearance in the Top 30.

Look at Wii's launch and early 2007 1st party lineup in Japan and compare it to the shitshow we have here.

I am still puzzled by this, even if Nintendo puts less effort in getting the third parties than the other manufacturers. How were there so many more willing to give a shot at releasing things for the GameCube successor going against the PS2 successor than the Wii successor flying solo? Even from companies like Namco Bandai that release scads of games and continued having notable Wii successes even in its slower years.

Who does those weekly (near launch) sales comparisons charts for the Wii U / PSV etc? Should be interesting to see how they look now.

After 12 weeks, Wii U is where GCN was at 15.0 weeks (December 23, 2001), where Wii was at 4.1 weeks (December 25, 2006), where 3DS was at 5.0 weeks (March 27, 2011), where PS3 was at 19.4 weeks (March 21, 2007), where PSV was at 31.0 weeks (July 15, 2012), and where X360 was at 154.6 weeks (November 21, 2008).

After 63 weeks, PSV is where PSP was at 17.7 weeks (March 8, 2005), where PS3 was at 43.7 weeks (September 7, 2007), where 3DS was at 18.5 weeks (June 30, 2011), and where X360 was at 208.3 weeks (December 1, 2009).

 

[Hoodbury]

How will that fix the situation?

Substantial price cut and 20 free games.

 

[Magicpaint]

Not to say that the Wii U situation exactly parallels the 3DS's, but the combination of a price drop plus quality software drops resulted in much better sales for the system.

I'm kind of baffled at why saying that the sales should pick up when software that normally moves Nintendo units arrive is an overly optimistic assessment.

People were saying the same thing with the Vita last year and yeah sales did pick up BUT they weren't sustainable week over week. I think people tend to forget that the 3DS never went as low as either system did, and so the situations aren't very comparable at all. Third party developers are not on board with the Wii U and Nintendo haven't shown otherwise...we saw how quickly the Wii lost steam (primarily due to lack of third party support) even with how explosive it got off the blocks so yeah, it's hard to be optimistic about the Wii U's fortunes.

 

[Road]

Ummmm....ever heard of the console called Gamecube. Plenty of Nintendo's "million sellers" were on that console and look at its hardware sales. I personally think Nintendo is heading down the same road but nots to late to change.

It seems neither the Japanese people (or European and American) or Japanese third parties see WiiU as a next gen platform. Nintendo cannot simultaneously support the WiiU ans 3DS without causing droughts in software which is what we are seeing now.

One huge factor is the PS4 and PS3. If Sony dramatically reduces the price of the PS3 or if the PS4 is able to get the big third party titles and GT in its launch window then the WiiU will be seriously dead. Right now that does not seem to be the case (though Sony has not announced all its titles yet).

Anyway the WiiU doing so bad does confirm one thing: there is a market for PS4.

Media Create threads in 2012: Vita is dead! 3DS is amazing!
Media Create threads in 2013: Wii U is dead! 3DS is amazing!
Media Create threads in 2014?

Wild guess: PS4 is dead! 3DS is amazing!

 

[metalmonstar]

Wow Vita gets a bump the week before its pricecut that is crazy. I am assuming some retailers lowered the price a little early. Wii U falls below 10k. Animal Crossing: New Leaf is just insane it is already at 3 million according to Famitsu. Now on to 4 million for the game. It has been going strong for so long that it is hard to imagine it selling under 50k anytime soon. At this pace is may sell 4 million within 5 to 7 months.

 

[FreedomFighter]

Will Soul Sacrifice outsell Animal Crossing next week?

 

[Into]

Thank you for those Road

Interesting to see how similar Wii U really is to Vita when it comes to Japan

 

[Brazil]

I am very, very curious about how DQX will perform. What would be considered a disappointment for the launch sales? Sub-100k? It's the last substantial third party release that we firmly know about, it bombing could lead to a lot of the unannounced games people are counting on to be quietly cancelled/moved to other hardware.

Going by the release calendar it should easily premiere at number 1 with no major releases that week or the week before on any other platform.

Personally, I highly doubt the game will pass 100k during its first week. I really can't guess what SE's curremt expectations for it are, though, so it's hard to judge what would be a good number.

And if there are third-parties developing Secret Wii U projects out there, I don't think the success or failure of a port of an MMO will influence their futures in any way.

 

[Hero]

pokemon similarly feels like 'oh shit, we should have done something like this from the start' given how they're not going to allow the 6 months it usually takes for localization.

they really should expand treehouse, or get in good with smaller publishers and have games localized worldwide more often. there's really no reason why xenoblade 2 shouldn't come out next year in america if it comes out in japan at the same time.

problem with nintendo is that they're so conservative, that even though they go lax on some of their policies, they have a huge host of problems still there. the company needs a big shakeup if they ever hope to get any meaningful support.

Honestly I totally agree.

90%+ of Nintendo's releases should be global since they have about the same amount of pull in any given region.

I get delaying something like Xenoblade 2 if it releases in December in Japan since that would be horrendous for the West, but for a company like Nintendo this should be far and few between, and even then, it should be out in like January-February immediately after.

They should really sit down and just re-evaluate every single business practice they have, ask both developers/publishers and consumers panels for feedback on what they feel could be better about it, and start acting across as many as they can at once.

I think it's pretty clear after the rough starts that both the 3DS and Wii U that Nintendo can no longer be ultra conservative like they historically are. I don't think adopting a loss-leading strategy like Sony and Microsoft is the direction they should take but a middle ground must be found.

Pokemon XY launching worldwide at the same time is a good start. It's pretty clear that 3DS owns Japan but in the west this is the big game that kids have historically bought a handheld system for. It really should have come out much earlier in the life cycle.

The Virtual Console service being almost completely absent on the Wii U just makes it that much harder for people to be excited for the system since at retail there's been no releases. I don't think it would drastically change sales but at least general perception might be better if Nintendo were at least releasing VC games at a steady pace.

Whether or not Iwata is still CEO I would hope that Nintendo has learned from their mistakes but they said the same thing after the 3DS fumbled so who knows. Maybe HD development really bit them in the ass.

 

[QaaQer]

People were saying the same thing with the Vita last year and yeah sales did pick up BUT they weren't sustainable week over week. I think people tend to forget that the 3DS never went as low as either system did, and so the situations aren't very comparable at all. Third party developers are not on board with the Wii U and Nintendo haven't shown otherwise...we saw how quickly the Wii lost steam (primarily due to lack of third party support) even with how explosive it got off the blocks so yeah, it's hard to be optimistic about the Wii U's fortunes.

Agreed. It is going to be really interesting though to see how many systems 3D Mario U, Wii Fit U, Smash U, etc. can actually sell. There looks to be almost no 3 rd party support and no compelling gimmick/feature (motion gaming), so those Nintendo franchises are going to have to do the heavy lifting.

The inability of Nintendo to sell this system to families is a big time opportunity for MS to take that family market because the Kinect concept is superb for children. We shall see if they can follow through.

 

[serplux]

Media Create threads in 2012: Vita is dead! 3DS is amazing!
Media Create threads in 2013: Wii U is dead! 3DS is amazing!
Media Create threads in 2014?

Wild guess: PS4 is dead! 3DS is amazing!

I'm sure there's room for a decent selling platform below the 3DS. We just need to see who will step up.

Agreed. It is going to be really interesting though to see how many systems 3D Mario U, Wii Fit U, Smash U, etc. can actually sell. There looks to be almost no 3rd party support and no compelling gimmick/feature (motion gaming), so those Nintendo franchises are going to have to do the heavy lifting.

The inability of Nintendo to sell this system to families is a big time opportunity for MS to take that family market because the Kinect concept is superb for children.

Even if the Xbox came out with the next mainline Dragon Quest, it would still lose handily to Nintendo's and Sony's output in Japan.

 

[Sammy Samusu]

Will Soul Sacrifice outsell Animal Crossing next week?

I'd say yes.

 

[QaaQer]

I'm sure there's room for a decent selling platform below the 3DS. We just need to see who will step up.



Even if the Xbox came out with the next mainline Dragon Quest, it would still lose handily to Nintendo's and Sony's output in Japan.

Really? Oh, wait, I forgot about the kinect space requirements...my bad.

 

[Akainu]

In reagrds to Vita and Wii U

HAHA!

 

[Bullza2o]

I like that Vita numbers! Wii U not so much

I'll gladly get a Wii U, but I need a price drop first. I know Nintendo can't make a price drop, but I can't make a price hike on my budget either.

 

[Freezie KO]

As a Wii U owner, it's really looking to me as if there was no reason that Nintendo should've even released the Wii U when they did. Sure, they'd be going up against the other consoles if they delayed, but at least then they could've had games ready. Maybe the hardware could've been cheaper or they could've gone for a bigger bump in specs.

And that's just considering if they still went with the largely unappealing GamePad as their main selling point. I'm not even thinking about if they totally revamped their console. What a mess...