Meh Reggie just doing Reggie stuff.

We don't know what they've increased production to, assuming it's still in the 2 million range that's still a pretty small amount of stock per territory when you break it down. 

PS4, XB1, Switch have all successful launch windows, I think the main take away is aiming at core/enthusiast gamers for launch is the best way to go. By having Zelda: BotW at launch, Nintendo ensured the first 2-3 million units are a pretty easy sale. We need to see where it goes after that. 

Wii U and 3DS had failed launches because Nintendo banked on casuals/"expanded audience" gamers by making Nintendogs + Cats and Nintendo Land + NSMBU the lead launch games in the era of the smartphone and thought they would be evergreen hits like that style of game was for the DS and Wii. They did not understand that market had moved on. 

You need to excite enthusiast gamers to your product in this day and age, and Zelda: BotW does that. It is Nintendo's most epic game arguably and one of its hardest and least forgiving, this is something made for the extreme gamer. That's what gets people excited though. 

Skyward Sword is a better launch game for the WiiU than NSMBU? Even though Skyward Sword couldn't manage 4m on a 100m userbase? How exactly are you going to do sword controls on the WiiU gamepad?

NSMB2 is over 10m on the 3DS. Zelda has never gone over 10m (until now).

We'll hopefully get a much clearer picture soon, but to me anyway all signs point to Switch selling solid Wii-like numbers. Never doubt Nintendo, especially on the handheld front (and make no mistake, Switch IS a handheld)

Skyward Sword would have to be repurposed to work without the motion controls if neccessary, but it would've been better off as a launch title for the Wii U.

The fact that it didn't sell that great even on the Wii shows though that people were abandoning that platform and that brand like crazy. That's the other benefit Switch is, it gets to start fresh with "cooler" branding, by 2012 the Wii brand had grown toxic and become associated with soccer moms. 

NSMBU had its legs cut off by NSMB2 ... the first Mario 2D game in like 20 years? That's cool. The first console Mario 2D game in like 20 years with 4-player? Pretty cool too. The 4th fucking Mario 2D game in 6 years and the second in six months .... even Nintendo fans were burned out and casuals were not impressed.

Ditto for Nintendogs + cats. They played their fill of that on the DS. 

Nintendo needed more core games for those platforms early on, ones that excited core players. Instead of Nintendogs, how about a Smash Brothers? Instead of NSMBU how about a open world 3D Mario? 

Nintendo is finding success now and how? Zelda: BotW, ok that is Nintendo's take on a popular genre -- the epic open world RPG concept. Great, that's an easy sell. Splatoon? Successful, because it look at what's popular today -- the online shooter and puts a Nintendo twist on it. This is what works. Making mini-game compilations and pet simulators and flooding your system with 2D platformers does not. 

You're saying the second highest selling game on the WiiU, over 5m, moved less consoles than a game that only sold 4m on a 100m userbase because of 'cool branding'.

People were calling the Wii a casual system from the get go even though it had Twilight Princess, Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3 in it's first year.

Wii had a lot of core games its first year. 

Wii U actually had a more casual library from Nintendo. 

You can't rely on those games to carry a platform, sure it's great when something like Wii Sports is going supernova, but you can't rely on that. 

Imagine if Nintendo was dumb enough to launch the Switch with 1, 2 Switch and like a 2D Yoshi game as the lead software titles with the hope that 1, 2 Switch could be the new Wii Sports. The thing would be very easy to find on storeshelves right now. 

If Switch is selling 300-400k in June/July NPD after a big restock in April, then sure something is definitely happening. If it doesn't well then probably .... not I guess. We will just have to wait and see. 

I don't think Switch is a Wii though, you would have much, much, much more buzz/craziness, social media hype on 1,2 Switch if it was taking off like the Wii and Wii Sports did. 

I suspect 1, 2 Switch will do OK largely because it's basically the only other retail game that has any kind of push behind it (zero competetion until Mario Kart really) and some people like more than just 1 game. It was kinda like the N64, many of its initial games sold over a million copies with ease, but there wasn't much else to choose from.

Nope. It was 3.06m

Check here, if you can't google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_U

If you mean sell-through. I don't think theres official numbers on either one. Wich, btw should be the biggest hint...

we have sell through for US & Japan.

According to NPD, Wii U sold 885k in Nov+Dec while shipments to the Americas were 1.32 million. When factoring in Canada, Mexico, S. America sell through would be 1 million at the most.

According to Media Create, Wii U sold 630k in December while shipments to Japan sere 830k.

So in Americas+Japan sell through was around 1.6 million with shipments at 2.15 million, there was 500k units on store stelves.

We dont have sell through numbers for the region Ninendo labels Others (Europe, Australia, etc) but we have shipment numbers at 900k at the end of December 2012 and 1.01 million at the end of September 2013.

Considering that Nintendo only shipped about 100k in the following 9 months shows that they had alot of excess stock in the launch month, certianly a few 100k.

So at the end of December there was at least 800k units on store shelves which matches up with VGchartz numbers.