Seeing this weeks numbers (20th Sept 14) has really opened my eyes to not only the Wii U's problem but the 3DS and Nintendo's as a whole.

Since when did North America become such a weak market for Nintendo?

Nintendo HW has always sold best in NA, a streak that looks set to be broken with the 3DS. 16.23m in Japan against 13.97m in NA.

Things look even worse when you look at the 3DS against past platforms. It'll be hitting its 4th anniversary after this Christmas and surely has seen its peak year already.

At the current 13.97m what realistic chance has it got of matching N64 (20.11m) or PSP (21.41m) let alone their past handheld efforts which all had sales north of 40m.

Then there's the poor Wii U. Whilst already (and likely to stay) ahead in North America compared to Europe and Japan the outlook it still bleak. It was outsold this week compared to Europe.

I can't see that as being anything but a total disaster for NoA.

We're comparing the European market which Nintendo have never been no.1 in (PS3 will overtake the Wii) and is commonly called Sonyland for good reason BEATING NA numbers, the biggest video game market in the world.

Even a dying Japanese market which NA sales eclipsed during its peak years in the 80s/90s is selling almost 50% of NA numbers.

15k against 60k+ for both XOne and PS4 shows exactly where Nintendo's biggest problem lies, imo.

They've completely lost relevance in the most important market in the world.

So what happened to Nintendo being a force in NA? Can they ever be again?

No games the market wants and buys by the tens of millions.

Nintendo has done things that majority don't like/or want. Simple as that. Regardless of how each side feels. You want better sales. You pretty much have to do similar things that MS/Sony does. Who knows, if the Wii U was basically a PS4, but with the gamepad. It might of done better. Meaning proper online features, power equal to the others, DLC content that people want/done right from the start, universal voice chat system, a friend list that can show you a number count, unified account system so we can play VC on 3DS and Wii U. etc.... Things like that.

Regarding software, the Wii U is still growing in terms of becoming competitive in the U.S. market. We've yet to see exclusive Nintendo-defining games aside from Mario Kart 8 and some of the other Mario games while the other consoles get the latest CoD and Destiny. However, since I'm assuming that you've watched E3, we're promised a lot of great things to happen to the Wii U in 2015 with major growth in first-party games.

The biggest and most realistic fault that I see in the West is lack of third-party support. Look at the numbers for Destiny (or next week's CoD: AW) sales. You see how much success can be accomplished if a deal could be settled or if successful third-party devs would be interested in Nintendo's console.

So don't count Nintendo out until next year where we will see major growth. I'm just wondering how well Smash Bros. U will turn out in a couple of months.

They need to give free reigns to NA and do something successful that people love in the West:
3D open world platformer a la Mario 64.
Give a Western studio a go to make Metroid under their guidance.

I think the 3DS issue is more that the market is vastly changed from the DS/PSP and GBA eras, its still going to end up (all in all) selling fine but on a vastly different landscape than what was enjoyed by the DS and the GBA. It doesn't help that Nintendo has been split on development across the two platforms to struggle holding up the WiiU while hte Gamecube at least had *some* breathing room.

Iwata has alrady admitted he misread and misplayed the market so he knows where mistakes were made, its a good sign for the future.

I think the major crisis for Nintendo in the west is this is the first generation where their youth strategy is really not working. Kids of the 80s, 90s and 00s in significant numbers have great nostalgia for Nintendo. Kids of the 10s are abandoning them for mobile devices.

Meanwhile Nintendo's relevance among core 16-35 demographic has been under siege since the PS1. The Wii showed Nintendo a blue ocean market of casual gamers, but these kind of people largely don't see the point in upgrading to a new device as they never cared about specs in the first place. Much like the kids, the grandparents and casuals have gone mobile where free or .99 games rule and can justify the purchase for other aspects (internet, office, etc.)

Nintendo is fighting a three front war (core, casuals and new generation) in the west and losing on all three. Sony seems to have just given up on handhelds and let Japanese third parties carry it focusing on the PS4 being a western minded system. Microsoft views Japan as a distant priority and has focused efforts on the west.

Honestly, I have no idea how Nintendo makes a comeback in the west. All I can think of is the Fusion concept so resources are pooled into one device rather than split between two. Even then not sure how power versus price would be balanced to make it appealing to consumers again.

I'm so glad Nintendo has money to hemoorage to keep them from having to go down the Sony/MS path just to appease to the banal tastes of American gamers.  Their brand doesn't match up with our culture right now for some reason (I can think of a few), but I don't need them to align themselves with values that don't represent the magic that is Nintendo.  Keep up the good work, Nintendo.  If all musicians played shit that everyone liked, we wouldn't have Jimi Hendrix, Metallica, Flaming Lips, Nirvana, etc.  

Nintendo is getting their lunch eaten by Apple/Android in the US for the kids and casual market. That's what happened.

That and Iwata has destroyed NOA, NOA used to be able to have autonomy to make games like GoldenEye and do things like the Star Wars games deal.

You can't ignore every software trend in the West and then act shocked that the West doesn't respond to your software. Not having a multiplayer FPS series to really replace GoldenEye/Perfect Dark (sorry but Metroid doesn't cut it sales wise) was a mistake.