First off, I am aware of the forum rules against necro-bumping, however, I had always planned to revisit this thread after Nintendo released it's FY 2016 Wii U hardware sales.
Let's rewind to when this thread was created: Nintendo had fallen just short of it's FY 2015 3.6 Million target by selling 3.38 million Wii U units from April 1, 2014 - March 31, 2015. It seemed absurd for Nintendo to predict that they could match these sales for the coming year by selling 3.4 million Wii U units. My reasons at the time were as follows:
- 2014 had Mario Kart 8 and Smash 4 release (two of Nintendo's biggest and established franchises).
- Zelda U was confirmed to be delayed outside of 2015 at the time of this thread... How could Nintendo
possibly hope to ship 3.4 million Wii U's without Zelda U when even Mario Kart 8 and Smash4 together
couldn't accomplish this?
- Splatoon was not getting very positive press at the time of this thread and so the only big title that appeared
to be coming in FY 2016 was Mario Maker.
- Iwata had already talked about codename NX at the time of this thread. This would surely hurt Wii U
momentum into 2016.
In order for Nintendo to move 3.4 million Wii U units in FY 2016 I figured, at the time of this thread, that Nintendo would need to do one or more of the following:
- A steep price cut (at least $50.00 but more likely $100.00 near the holiday 2015 season).
- Have some major unannounced title (a Pokémon RPG, another Mario game, etc..) release in 2015.
- Luck out and have either Splatoon or Mario Maker catch lightning and become a viral hit.
- Do something really cool with Amiibo and basically create another major pop culture fad.
- At the very least have Zelda U release before March 31, 2016 to try to move major units before the end of
the fiscal year.
Well, fast-forward to 2016, Nintendo has announced that they shipped 3.26 Million Wii U units during FY 2016 which brings them very close to the 3.4 that they were aiming for at the time of this article and is just shy of their FY 2015 peak. How did Nintendo manage to do this? They didn't cut prices, Zelda U still doesn't have a name (much less a proper trailer), the Wii U had an awful holiday 2015 line-up and Nintendo has slowly killed any momentum the Wii U had with silence about its future and constant posturing on the NX. Let's not even mention the major inventory issues that the Wii U has been experiencing in Japan for pretty much the entirety of 2016 so far. So how did Nintendo almost match the sales of FY 2015 where the console had MK8 and Smash and a fair bit of positive momentum? Did Nintendo end up having any big tricks up their sleeve? Here are some of my thoughts:
- Splatoon. This was the viral hit that Nintendo needed, it single-handedly moved massive numbers of Wii U
consoles. The live update strategy and the splatfests were a huge success and it kept Splatoon relevant far
longer than even MK8. Splatoon was totally out of left-field and almost nobody saw this coming in early May
2015.
- Super Mario Maker. This wasn't quite the hit that Splatoon was but it is a really solid game that is bringing in
steady sales akin to Minecraft. This one-two combo between Splatoon and SMM has proved to be at least as
effective (probably more so) than MK8 and Smash. This is incredible given that both of these games are
highly experimental new concepts from Nintendo.
- The residual benefit of MK8 and Smash4 was more than I expected. Nintendo managed to keep both of these titles relevant for pretty much the entire year of 2015.
