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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Comparing the Quantity of Retail Games Between Wii U and Previous Nintendo Consoles

Purple on 30 July 2014

So we're coming up to the end of July and it's been a horridly quiet year for retail releases on Wii U. I'm in Australia and we've had seven games in seven months. (I've put games published by Nintendo in bold.)

  1. The Lego Movie Videogame
  2. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
  3. Lego The Hobbit
  4. Mario Kart 8
  5. How to Train Your Dragon 2
  6. One Piece: Unlimited World Red
  7. Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark

Looking ahead, I count another 12 games that are planned for retail release in 2014.

  1. Hyrule Warriors
  2. Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes
  3. Bayonetta 2
  4. Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures 2
  5. Skylanders: Trap Team
  6. Just Dance 2015
  7. Sonic Boom
  8. Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham
  9. Watch Dogs
  10. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
  11. NES Remix Collection
  12. Wii Sports Club

So that's 19 retail games (8 Nintendo published) for an entire calendar year. Let's compare that to the number of releases in the third calendar year of previous Nintendo consoles.

N64: 63 (9 Nintendo published)

Gamecube: 112 (12 Nintendo published)

Wii: 243 (7 Nintendo published)

Wii U: 19 (8 Nintendo published)

To put this in context, none of the three previous consoles ever released fewer than 50 retail games in a calendar year prior to the release of their successor. By my count, Wii U had 27 retail games in 2012, 45 in 2013 and just 19 this year.

Don't know if anyone is interested in these numbers, but I thought I'd share all the same! Might go a little way to explain why Nintendo's finances are in severe decline.

 

 

 



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KLXVER on 30 July 2014

Thats what happens when third parties hate you



Metallox on 30 July 2014

Yes, it's kinda depressing.



My bet with The_Liquid_Laser: I think the Switch won't surpass the PS2 as the best selling system of all time. If it does, I'll play a game of a list that The_Liquid_Laser will provide, I will have to play it for 50 hours or complete it, whatever comes first. 

fleischr on 30 July 2014

Well if it means anything, it means that 3rd party support probably couldn't decline any further at retail.

Indie games presumably are supposed to fill that void -- but I doubt the mainstream consumer knows anything about them.



I predict NX launches in 2017 - not 2016

eFKac on 30 July 2014

Wii U line up is really depressing, no wonder it sells terribly. As much as I like indies, they need to go in between big retail releases. For both keeping a good momentum in hardware sales and keeping the current install base happy.



So it is happening...PS4 preorder.

Greatness Awaits!

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TheLastStarFighter on 30 July 2014

Only 63 games published for N64? Surely you are missing one.



animegaming on 30 July 2014
Miguel_Zorro said:

I couldn't help but notice that there isn't a single new IP among the Nintendo published games.  

I'd argue that it's the NEW IP that drove the relative success of the Wii - games like Wii Sports (2006) and Wii Fit (2007).  Since then, it feels like they've been going back to the Mario/Zelda well too often.


there's a few new IP's in development but they aint ready until 2015



MoHasanie on 30 July 2014

That sucks and Nintendo can't do anything to fix it.



    

NNID: FrequentFlyer54

Purple on 30 July 2014
eFKac said:
Wii U line up is really depressing, no wonder it sells terribly. As much as I like indies, they need to go in between big retail releases. For both keeping a good momentum in hardware sales and keeping the current install base happy.


Yeah. Indies and Virtual Console are good but it doesn't help the Wii U's presence at retail. The entire Wii U section at my EB Games has a couple of copies of Mario Kart and an ad for Watchdogs. If you didn't follow video games closely, you'd think the Wii U was dead.