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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Before the Wii U launched, how successful did you think it´d be a year later?

oniyide on 03 November 2013
justiceiro said:
I was confident... till E3 2012. Went downhill after that. The metro last light comment killed it: "the wiiu CPU is slow and horrible". That was the moment that i realised that wiiu will not get decent ports.


it is decent ports, maybe even great. I wouldnt take those devs words anyway. they dont seem good at making a console game anyway, if the reviews for PS360 version of the game are to be believed.



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green_sky on 03 November 2013

Certainly didn't think it would be doing this bad. I was hoping it would do half as good as Wii lifetime. So somewhere in the 50-60 million range but not too sure anymore. I also thought the sales would pick up more after E3 or at least in August.

Seems like even Nintendo fans are bad mouthing the system. I can somehow get that why soccer moms watching shopping channel/Oprah are less interested in it but i don't really get why everyday gamers are so turned off. Some games are out, more are coming soon and even more will follow in 2014.

Did Nintendo mess up with game release schedule and marketing though. Yes!



bubblegamer on 03 November 2013

I was expecting as good as the NES performance level. But now i'm not sure if it'll outsell the N64!



mjo011 on 03 November 2013

I believed it would do something like 70% the sales of the Wii.
That was before I realized that 3rd party publishers never wanted it to succeed, and I was also pretty shocked that Nintendo didn't provide any key software for the 7 months following its launch.



Nintentacle on 03 November 2013
pokoko said:
I thought it would do better than it has but I didn't think it would do all that well overall.

I figured the casual market wouldn't be that interested, which has turned out to be the case. I also figured that Nintendo had a window of a few months to really go all-out on building an installed base and establishing momentum before the other next gen consoles arrived. I've been overwhelmed at how much they've failed at that.

Basically, for me, this can be broken down into two periods: when I thought that Mario Kart and/or Smash Bros. would land in 2013, and then when I realized that they would not. After I found out that Nintendo had nothing major for this year, I knew that it would be an uphill battle.

Personally, I thought that the abandonment of the Wii would position Nintendo for a strong first year with the Wii U in terms of software, which would absolutely be needed to fight the Microsoft/Sony hype. Add all of those factors together and it's easy to see why the Wii U is flopping around a bit.

Super Mario 3D World is coming out on the 22nd, but that's it. 



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kupomogli on 03 November 2013

I thought it wouldn't sell as good as the Wii because most of the Wii owners didn't play games and got it because of the novelty of it. I didn't specifically give off any number, but assumed it would lose about half of the Wii userbase, if not more. It's doing worse than I expected.



Mythmaker1 on 03 November 2013

Am I surprised? Not at all.

Pretty much from the start, I thought the Wii U was conceptually flawed. By the time the price and SKU's were revealed, I was pretty sold on the idea of this system being a big problem for Nintendo.

I can see why some people might have expected more of the system in its first year, but I'm not surprised.



I believe in honesty, civility, generosity, practicality, and impartiality.

HoloDust on 03 November 2013

IIRC, I was expecting some 30mil lifetime...so not really surprised.



Talal on 03 November 2013

I expected a 60 million minimum.



fps_d0minat0r on 03 November 2013

the time they launched at was suicidal. no chance against ps360 and I knew they would have no chance against the ps4 and x720 (as it was known then) when they came out.
still expected it to do slightly better than it actually did.