it doesn't have to, that crowd is no more than 20 million for each of them, with Xbox fading away. There are other 100 million costumers to gain.

The WiiU will sell, will stay around, but will be over shadowed by the sheer amount of support its going to miss out on. They are not getting the support the 360 received and and the tablet or pad is not having the same effect motion control had. There is no Wii sports this time around and thats been a huge problem.

Yup...the Wii casual appeal faded away, and seeing Gamecube sales, there just isn't enough modern Nintendo core fans to keep it afloat by themselves. Lacking modern graphics and major 3rd party games down the road aint gonna help either.

*sigh* Sony was able to ship 23.8 million PS3's with an AVERAGE selling price ABOVE $400 and did not have a price that averages the Wii U's current price for close to 3 years (august 2009 80G for $299 160g for $399)...and this is the PS3, you know, the system with the worst console launch.  I think they will have an easier time selling the PS4 with a price tag that, for all the rumors, is going to be less than the PS3 at launch.

Great article and surprising thinking outside the enthusiast box for a game site.

Where I differ is I think tablets (and gaming tablets) will kill a lot of WiiU's potential sales. And I think the gamepad for a casual gamer might hurt WiiU sales. Tablets offer far better value and why buy a tablet-esque device (with overpriced games) when you can just get a tablet? Dual screen/asymetrical play/blah blah means nothing to those consumers. The advantages of WiiU's gamepad aren't obvious and the advantages of a tablet are.

Also if MS does have deals in place where broadcast companies are subsidizing 720 sales (like cell phone companies subsidize cell phones) we could see free 360 or $99/$199 720 with a 2-3 year commitment. That'll undercut WiiU and scuttle it's sales.

Nintendos biggest mistake is that it made Nintendoland not a bundled game with EVERY VERSION.

I mean people investing in the black WiiU are not really the ones that Nintendoland is for and people that want the cheaper white version are the ones that want Nintendoland more.

They messed up the launch with the bundle decision they made.


I mean seriously why didnt they just give every single buyer a free copy of Nintendoland? Its not like 40 million people will buy it.... and its not like it had a huge budget. Wii came with a game everyone was showing others how to use the system and and the thing sold thanks to word of mouth. WiiU doesnt have that.

Nintendo should bundle Nintendoland with every WiiU console and should give premium buyers a 15 or 20 dollar voucher for the Eshop.


I thought "omg huge mistake" The first second I heard that Nintendoland is not bundled with the cheaper basic.

Just gotta say I love your sig lol.  Playstation and GoT blended together.

If the wiiU launches with a good pokemon mmo, all bets are off, the wiiU wins next gen regardless of sales:P

price is relative to function.  for proof look no further than vita vs. the smartphone.  costing more and doing more is very successful for smartphones.

this will be the same for wiiU vs. ps4/xbox8. 

wiiU is just games.  it can't even play a dvd lol.  ps4/xbox8 will play games and a hell of a lot more.  ps hasn't really announced their multimedia stuff yet and xbox has yet to announce anything but even at $300 vs. $500 it won't take much to make wiiU look irrelavent.  ..especially when it isn't even getting half the games either.  i guess we'll know for sure soon enough but i don't think miiverse, a web browser, and netflix is going to stack up to MS's services on the next xbox.

tl;dr, but forget that PS4 and Nextbox will cost $500. $400 is the sweet spot.

The thing is that the current gen casual market is long gone and have moved to mobile phones and whatnot, which means that Nintendo's blue ocean red ocean strategy didn't bear much fruit (they thought casual gamers would start to like core games). So Nintendo is back to the Gamecube situation and its 20 million core player base who love classic Nintendo games and that's about it.

Next gen casual market will be different - more social media and living room connectivity oriented than "family playing Wii Sports together" which was tha backbone of the Wii's success. This benefits Nextbox, and will be their chance to be roughly on par with PS4, despite being so uninterested in the core gamer.

My prediction:

PS4: 100 million (in a record long generation of upwards of 10 years)
Nextbox: 80 million
Wii U: 40 million (terminated early, after 5 years when Nintendo puts a new console out)