Last week, the Wii U sold less than 27,000 units worldwide, according to VGChartz. Judging by the Famitsu/ Media-Create numbers, and the current sales trajectory/lack of new games, I expect we'll see sub-25k numbers this week, though I can't imagine it will drop much lower.

This isn't a DOOM thread, or a Nintendo-hating thread, but these sales figures do drive me to ask how much longer Nintendo can afford to produce Wii U's.

Depending on when production started, Nintendo was probably producing Wii U's at a rate of 800k-1 million a month through the launch window. Given the sudden sales drop-off, they've almost had to have slowed production, but if they start selling only 100k units per month, I'm left to wonder if they'll have to suspend production in order to liquidate their stock.

Do you see this happening, or do you think rising sales/lower production rates can make up the difference?

First of all, we don't know Nintendo's weekly or even monthly sales estimate in terms of volumes. Perhaps their revised annual forecast actually already takes sub-30.000 weekly sales into consideration at this time of the year? It can not come as a complete surprise to the company management that sales in May could be very low, due to the current software situation.

If sub-30.000 weekly sales are within estimates, then I doubt we will see a slowdown in production. According to their forecast for this fiscal year, a re-bounce is in any case expected after the summer. Taking that into consideration, Nintendo actually needs to build stock over the summer.

However, if sub-30.000 weekly sales is much lower than revised estimates, Nintendo is in serious trouble. A temporary halt in production of Wii U's is still probably not an option. There are costly risks involved in doing so. For instance it would seriously harm relations with companies manufacturing hardware components for Wii U. It's also an easier process to just increase production from low numbers, than to start all over again from zero.

For the time being Nintendo can afford to take the risk of stockpiling Wii U's for the holiday season. Don't forget that they have a window of opportunity to turn things around before the release of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. However unlikely such a turn around might look today, don't forget what two little games managed to do in March. With the release of Monster Hunter Tri Ultimate and Lego City Undercover in March Wii U hardware sales bounced back to quite healthy levels. Then imagine what Mario Kart U, Smash Bros U, 3D Mario, Wii Fit U and Pokémon could do to drive sales. Especially if most those games are released before Sony and Microsoft have a chance to gain momentum.

There are three main reasons for low Wii U sales:

1. Lack of AAA games
2. Uncertain market as people generally seem to have a "wait-and-see" attitude (at least until we know more about PlayStation 4 and Xbox One)
3. Lack of true support of the unique features with Wii U

None of the above is impossible to overcome. Certainly not for a company of Nintendo's magnitude.

nintendo has a ton of money in the bank.

if the sales continue to be super sluggish this is what will happen:
-Price cut
-Get tons of games out
-Market them like crazy
-what?
-Profit

I predict this is the 3ds experince all over again.

this ain't going the way of the dreamcast, not with the investments they have made with Wii U when they have yet to release a Mario Kart, 3D Mario game, super smash bros or even a legend of zelda or any other key Nintendo titles

Maybe we should wait to see what happens when they release some of their big games later this year.

sony didn't for ps3 or psvita,I guess not.

They did that during Winter 2001? For the GC didn't they?

Nintendo is going to tough it out. They can afford to do so.

I could see it slowing, but not stopping altogether. If it ever stopped then they would certainly be in some massive trouble, but it's not that bad. The turnaround is slow, but it will happen.

Nintendo knows how to run their business. As such, I don't think they're going to find themselves in a situation where they have to do something related to hardware production volume that they didn't think they'd have to do.

In other words, they know a lot more about all the various complexities of their own hardware production and all of that than we do, and they're not going to be caught off guard. They've been doing this since the early 1980's.