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curl-6 said:
UncleScrooge said:

Again, what I said was people who think the Vita or Wii U "just need some time" are wrong. Of course Mario Kart and such will boost sales. Sales will increase and I expect the situation in late 2013 to look much different than it does today - the other next gen consoles will be the new and expensive system without games and the Wii U will be cheaper with a bigger software library. But sales won't increase dramatically. Going from a consoles that sold almost 20m units a year to a console that will barely crack 10m a year is a huge step down. And the 3DS only sold 13m in 2012 - still people on this site continue to praise the system's sales like it was a huge hit. Heck, the Vita sold 3.5m units last year and people say "wait for next christmas to judge the system"  

What Nintendo needs to do is position the Wii U as the actual successor to the Wii - they need to get mass market friendly again, produce games like Wii Sports, get the female gamers back and stop focusing on "hardcore" games or third party support. 

Before you can change your situation you have to admit you got yourself into trouble. That's always the first step towards future success. And that's what I want Nintendo to do. 

I disagree on the bold; once it has Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Bayonetta 2, the new Xeno game, etc, I expect sales will pick up hugely; let's face it, weekly sales right now are crappy that there' plenty of room for a dramatic increase. ;)

I do agree however that they need to win back the casual crowd, but that will be very hard to do at the current price tag, casuals tend to have a lower price range. How would you suggest they do it?


Those are the same arguments that were used to prove that the Wii was going to bounce back from the decline, the games and the peripherals that were coming soon and while there is room for improvement, there is little evidence that it will occurr any time soon, comparing the Wii U to the 360, for instance, is worthless, they are two entirely different consoles in entirely different circumstances made by two companies from different worlds. Comparing it to the 3DS is equally futile, again these are entirely different cirumstances, one would think that people would have learned by now that history with vague similarity, fancy graphs and aligned launches are a poor indicator of the future. I guess not.

Winning back the casual crowd will be impossible, the product itself is designed from the bottom with major faults that ensures it will never fully entice casuals or core gamers. Some bad and hasty decisions have been made regarding the Wii U and its current sales situation was entirely predictable based on these. The price tag is fine, have you seen the going rate for iPad's and iPhones's and the competition? Casuals are fine dosing out the dough for these and playing games on them and that's Nintendo's problem now; the Wii mainly lived off of a market that has all but disappeared from the home console base and won't come back, social gaming, tablets and smartphones has wooed this crowd and taken them in completely and the very nature, bulk and appeal of the home console goes against the new casual consumer philosophy. The market has gone and left Nintendo behind (and will do the same to Sony and MS if they don't respond accordingly), they have trouble adjusting to a market they do not dictate, as we've seen since the end of the SNES era and with the decline of the Wii and their tech efforts with the Wii U is too little too late and aimed in the wrong direction.

If Sony and MS are stupid enough to chase the casual userbase with their new consoles, they are headed for a small disaster and will quickly hit the wall, this is likely the reason why none of them feel overly stressed by Nintendo launching first, they wanted to see the market response to the Wii U and certainly plan accordingly. I've been saying a couple of things for some time now and I will repeat them; the Wii U will not be anywhere near as successful as the Wii (which is obvious now) and will have a shorter lifespan and; the 8th generation will be shorter than the 7th and see a historical first, a decline in hardware and software totals for the generation, meaning that I have small faith in any massive selling power from MS and Sony as well. The PS2 with its incredible marketshare and monstrous hardware and software sales was a one-off, it will never happen again in home console history, the market has changed dramatically and irreversibly (if this is for the better though, is hard to say).

Claiming that the Wii U will do Gamecube numbers in the end is folly in my opinion but thinking it will do 360 numbers is equally unrealistic, somewhere in the middle is the most likely for now.