Imperfected
Member
Nintendo's target for the fiscal year was nine million units. Do you want to illustrate for me a reality where they sell less than 1.5 million units in November and still manage that? I'm legitimately curious as to how you think that scenario plays out.
That was not a target they set for console warriors, pundits, or analysts. That was a target they set for investors. That was what the people who pay to run this business needed to see for this enterprise to have been considered a success. Those are the numbers that everyone has been waiting for, and every time a game comes out and fails to notch the measuring stick any closer to that unobtainable goal the onus moves on to the next one, with Mario ever-waiting at the back of the pack to pick up the slack.
Every time it's been, "Of course the Wii-U isn't selling, none of the system selling games are out. Look at how much Mario sold on the Wii. Look at how much Mario Kart sold on the Wii. They're going to do the same thing on the Wii-U, those millions of people are going to buy the console to play them."
Where are the millions of sales? Or are we going to play this game again, and expect the next release to "bump" the sales up to two million in a month to make up for all these months of missed targets and distinct underperformance? Or better yet, are we just going to pretend like the goals and expectations never existed, and that the piss-poor status quo of Wii-U month-to-month sales only needs to improve relative to itself without being informed in any way by external factors?
Better yet, why don't you define for me what you think would qualify as "turning around" the Wii-U's fortunes? Do you think 800k would have done it? 800k, in November, riding the release of the company mascot and supposedly most anticipated game yet released for the system? Would that have brought the third parties back, improved the attach rate enough to bring the anemic sales of the existing backlog out of the dumps, and provided enough economics of scale to reduce the manufacturing costs of the console? Would selling 800k in what's routinely the highest sales month of the year, in what is habitually the territory where Nintendo sells the most consoles, indicate any potential to hit 9,000,000 units sold a year as a sustainable goal?
They had the stock on hand. They had their "system selling franchise" on deck. The demand for new consoles is literally at a record high. When else are they ever going to sell enough to come anywhere close to meeting their financial goals if not in November?
Yes, anyone who was harping about how Mario (or Mario Kart, or Donkey Kong, or Wii Fit U, or Smash...) is going to "save" the Wii-U is, for all intents and purposes, saying they expect those games to move millions of units to make up for the absolutely awful sales of the system during the drought. Yes, that was an entirely unrealistic and absurd expectation. Why do you think so many of us were saying that it was a pipe dream, and that it's time to throw the goddamn "chalkboard" in the garbage?
