We need to talk about the Wii U sales, what happened?

[Tachikoma]

BaldrSkies said:

Tachikoma said:
At least to me, a very bad sign is that despite the console being the newest one out, over here in Japan stores such as book-off and hard-off (second hand stores) have vast numbers of wii u's
I was in the Book-off in Machida yestersay and they had, on my rough count, 22 white wiiu's and 17 black wiiu's, apposed to 5 ps3's and 3 Xbox 360s.
Additionally, a few days ago while in akihabara, i noticed the book-off there had a sign up stating they were no longer accepting wiiu consoles (store refusing to by them) when i asked a store clerk why he said because they have too many in store and theyre not selling at all.

the wiiu units in these stores are complete and boxed, priced at 19,500yen for 32gb and 14,500yen for 8gb, which is a big reduction from retail prices, and still they don't sell.

If you ask me, that is a very bad sign.

Yamada Denki also stopped advertising the Wii U altogether. Hardware, software, nothing. I don't think I saw any advertisement in Yodobashi lately either. ちょっと空気過ぎるだろ？

So big retailers are dropping advertisement too. The consoles are there, but after the initial couple weeks they are just piling up everywhere. There's no new games. Late multiplat Shin Hokuto Musou for January, arcade Tank!Tank!Tank! for February, minigame Game&Wario and late multiplat Need For Speed for March, nothing for April, multiplat HD Biohazard Revelations for May. Nothing else has a set release.

There is no reason to buy a WiiU now, and management made a huge mistake pushing the launch away from Spring 2013. Imagine if Wii U came out in April/May with all these games at once, plus only a month away from E3 for big new game announcements that were actually coming reasonably soon and with set release dates. People would have been much more excited.

Indeed, the Bic Camera in Sagamiono, while it has WiiU stuff on sale, doesn't have any advertising anywere, it's just a small section off on it's own with no fanfare.

Frankly, i see more kids gathered around the iPhone 5 demo units than i do anywhere near the console stuff, except for of course the 3DS, where you see lots of people looking at games or playing the demo console. But the WiiU is really, really not rearching the people, they just don't care.