I just stumbled across some intersting numbers on the platform totals page, check out the following total software sales for Nintendo consoles excluding the Wii:

Europe:

SNES - 47.25M

NES - 42.21M

N64 - 41.04M

GCN - 40M

NA:

NES - 228.08M (90% market share)

N64 - 139.37M

GCN - 135.02M

SNES - 132.98M (even with the Genesis/MD's 95.42M together they only total 228.4M, not much growth GoG)

I excluded Japan as not only is there no pattern but even the Wii didn't match the NES/SNES there.

For reference the Wii moved 481.72M in NA and 248.15M (more than their previous 4 combined - wow) in Europe.

Now with this info is it possible for the Wii U to get close to these levels of software sales? If so do you think it could be judged as a success?

Hm, that's quite interesting, actually. Especially considering software is where the money's made. For Wii U to get to comparable levels though, it will need to actually get more games.

How accurate are those? We had a fact sheet on this Nintendo shareholders conference recently with all software numbers.
I ask cause I remember DS software sales to be very much undertracked.

Very interesting find! How much HW did Nintendo sell in each region per gen?

I can't help but wonder if the transition to HD is going to be a continuing problem for Nintendo, resulting in longer development cycles and less total software during the Wii U's lifetime. I think there is a good chance the total volume of software sales will be down.

Even if it sells the same HW as N64 or GC i doubt it can get that many SW sales. Wii U isn`t getting that many 3rd party games and i don`t think Indie games will be enough to warrant those numbers.

Putting all my faith in VGChartz tbh

GCN managed to hold the ground on software sales, didnt knew that.

Maybe an interesting statistic, but not really relevant. Games were a lot more expensive (compared to income levels) the further back you go. When I was a kid, I was lucky if I got one game for Christmas and one for my birthday. By the time the Gamecube came out I was in my 20s and could buy a lot more, but even kids in the 2000s were a lot more spoiled than us 80s/90s kids :)

So I have 40+ Gamecube games, and maybe 10 NES games, of course the attach rate has gone up.

The Wii U is not comparable to the Gamecube. The Gamecube had a huge game library, and most major multiplats came out for the gamecube, and sometimes the gamecube version was even the best version. The Wii U is drier than N64...

So no, Wii U will not reach Gamecube software levels. Wii U is on life support at this point, personally I believe Nintendo has realized it can't be saved and are moving resources to future platforms already.