Firstly a quick comparison.
Both Gamecube and Wii launched in Novembers around the same time, so comparing is easy, both 6 Q's in the shipments stand at
Gamecube - 9.55m
WiiU - 6.25m*
*Nintendo forecast 390k for the Q just gone, we'll find out in less than a week if they hit that.
So WiiU has a 3.3m deficeit to make up going forward. But how does Gamecube do over the same following 3 Q's (leading up to the end of the year)?
Gamecube - 13.94m
This means WiiU has to ship 7.69m consoles between April and Dec 31st (for reference last year they shipped 2.41m).
It's .. impossible to predict what MK will do to WiiU sales, we could talk ranges but peole will always disagree, 7.69m is a very large number for the next 3 Q's however consider WiiU is still below that by 1.5m after 6 Q's.
This takes us into 2015, the last year sales could stand a chance of peaking, 2016 onwards will be its twilight years (and possibly might even see a successor this holiday, 4 years of WiiU).
Gamecube by end of 2015 - CY 18.03m. An extra 4.09m consoles shipped in 2004. I believe if here is any chance WiiU can overtake Gamecube it's in this year.
It's likely WiiU goes into 2015 still trailing GC by a few million, as that 7.69m figure will not be easy to overcome. 4m for Gamecube in its third full year is on par with WiiU's life so far (4m over 4 Q's Gamecube, 6m over 6 Q's WiiU). So WiiU is going to have to perform at least 50% above its performance so far, in its 3rd year, which would be some sort of record for Nintendo (Nintendo consoles peak far far earlier than the industry average which is 3 years. (Wii shipped the most units in 2008, Gamecube the most in 2003, 3DS in its launch year, for some reason Nintendo hardware is frontloaded).
2016 onwards isn't really worth talking about as sales will be very low for WiiU at that point.
Opinions?
