Because the game industry doesn't care if the 3DS suceeds, however, they want the Wii U to fail. Therefore, the hardcore are being manipulated with game industry propaganda against the Wii U, and think it's the next Atari Jaguar.

However, the joke is on the game industry, because they are the ones heading for doom. Nintendo can turn the Wii U around on their own if they're smart.

Until this thread, I actually hadn't really seen many people thinking Wii-U couldn't recover. At least "recover" in the sense of finding a baseline higher than 23k a week.

My concern with the issue is that recovery for Wii-U is going to be much slower than 3DS and as a result it might never reach those kind of sales levels due to the stigma that goes with selling poorly for such a long time.

It's now 6 months after Wii-U launched. 3DS already had its emergency price cut by now, and due to it being sold at a profit anyway it was a substantial price cut. Wii-U doesn't have that luxury. I'm also unsure it'll have the one-two punch of 3D Mario & Mario Kart that 3DS had, unless Nintendo are really pushing development of those two titles forward over everything else. From what games we know are definitely coming in 2013 so far, I wouldn't say any of them would have the impact which those titles had on 3DS.

So all in all, I've never doubted that Wii-U will swing it back, but I've always thought it's going to take a much longer time to do it than 3DS, which is why I don't think 3DS is a particularly good precedent to follow. But perhaps I'm wrong.

Given the usual costs of hardware decreasing after a console has been on the market for around a year I'd say that they could definitely afford to drop the price of the Wii U. They were only making a small loss at launch anyway.

You've also got to take into account the weaker Yen too. Nintendo should be able to drop the price by $50 around October to coincide with the launch of 3D Mario and make a small profit on each unit sold, or at the very least break even.

I too find it very odd that people are writing the console off so early, there's a thread in the Sales sub-forum asking whether the PS4 will outsell the Wii U and One and there's a great deal of people thinking it's going to have around 30m total lifetime sales this generation!!! :Oo

I can't understand the thinking of some people. It's sold over 3m already and imo it should do another 3m between now and November and should do another 4m from November until the end of the year. Those figures should be doable considering that we're going to see Wii Fit U, Pikmin 3, The Wonderful 101, Game & Wario, Wind Waker HD, 3D Mario and Mario Kart 8 all released before the end of the year, plus I suspect one or two surprises that we don't know about yet.

People also seem to be forgetting that both the PS4 and One's components will be on a 28nm process that hasn't fully matured yet, meaning that yields will be low and that the consoles will be supply constrained as a result. Sony and Microsoft will be lucky to have installed userbases over 1.5m at the end of the year, and as much as 2m each is going to be practically impossible. And if that wasn't bad enough you've got to take into account that both are going to be more expensive than the Wii U and that we're in the middle of the worst worldwide recession anyone has seen in donkey's years and that hardly anyone will have any cash going spare going into the New Year.

I wonder if we'll see these gaming media journalists writing about Sony and Microsoft going third party when their current gen consoles don't outsell the Wii U launches aligned..? I think not.

I think it would be smart not to buy any console at launch anymore, 360 had RROD, PS3/3DS/Vita/Wii U all had lack of games post launch and 2 of them had quick price drops. Thats every major system in the past 8 years, except for Wii, and they all had slow starts which is why I think PS4/X1 will have similar results.

The main differences are: 3DS had no competition when it price dropped, and it had no viable competition after vita launched. Wii U has 2 consoles which will present significant competition and it may be they don't price drop much or at all before xbone and ps4 launch. Fail is possible but more like not sell more than the competition.

Handhelds have always been an easier go for Nintendo.

Japan is completely handheld centric and the kids demographic in the West is still a stronghold for Nintendo that still buys handhelds, sometimes multiple ones per household for each kid. They get decent third party support for the 3DS in Japan too, so that helps.

People also simply don't expect the same variety of games on handhelds. It's not a big deal to not have FPS shooters or racing sims or sports games or cinematic action games on handhelds or to have a software drought now and again.

On consoles, people tend to buy more games, which comes with pressure to have a more well rounded library and steadier lineup of releases, something Nintendo struggles with. That's where not having Western exclusives and "hardcore" games hurts you.

Nintendo handhelds have generally outperformed their home consoles.  The 3DS had more breathing room to adjust its price.  Development is quicker on the 3DS than the Wii U.  The price cut was less than five months and the Mario games about 8 months post launch in the west.  We're already six months into the Wii U's life, and it likely won't be getting better for at least a couple months.

Even the week directly before the 3DS price cut saw sales 70% higher than what the Wii U did last week.  A few weeks prior and it was doing around four times as much as the Wii U.  I'm not sure everyone grasps just how low the Wii U's sales are.  People like to point to the 3DS and PS3 for slow starts, but neither of them saw sales this low, and it is likely to get worse in the coming weeks.  So far it has trailed the Gamecube for six straight months in the US, and has fallen behind in Japan as well.

A lot of people seem to talk of wishful thinking, but surely expecting a miraculous recovery as well as the failure of its competition is the real wishful thinking.  It would seem the wish was already granted otherwise.

With all that said, I don't necessarily think the Wii U will be a failure.  However many people seem to brush away the current sales reality while acting like a recovery is already set in stone.

Yup, the lowest the 3DS hit in the NPD at $250 with "no games" I think was like 97,000 for a month, which would be like 3x thie Wii U last month.

Quite honestly the Wii U has a better lineup early on, NSMBU + Nintendo Land + Zombi U + LEGO City + Monster Hunter Tri + Black Ops 2 > Nintendogs + cats + Steel Diver + Pilotwings + Street Fighter IV + Ridge Racer any day.

The Wii U may need Mario/Mario Kart U just to baseline up to GameCube levels at this rate, they're doing terrible.

I don't think some people realize what they're asking Mario Kart U to do is basically ramp up hardware sales by a factor of 4-5x, which is ridiculous. It's going to spike during Christmas and then probably baseline down to 2.5x where it's at right now.

Because Nintendo will always fail and Sony will always succeed(Microsoft doesn't matter).

That might actually be enough. If Nintendo is willing to publically eat their words, and if the Yen and production costs come down enough, they can probably break even manufacturing the system; I doubt they could make much of a profit.

And as far as things go, Nintendo sold 3.06 million Wii U systems in  2012. 3 months into 2013, they'd sold 0.39 million. Weekly sales are decaying frightfully fast, and in order to sell 3 million before November, the Wii U would have to sell, on average, 4x as much as it is now, and sel 5x higher than that (20x higher than now) to sell 4 million during the holidays. Games will help, but they won't do that. Wii Fit U should help, but even it can't carry sales that far. More likely, we'll see 1-1.5 million before November, and 2-2.5 during holidays, at best.

And the reason you won't see that happening is because, unlike Nintendo, their business is not based entirely in video games.