| Yakuzaice said: Regarding the first half of your post, I don't see how any of that is relevant to the situation. That argument might have held some water 2 months ago after the mediocre European launch, but not anymore. We know that there were no supply issues. If anything the Wii U was overshipped, not the case for the consoles you compared it to. Delaying the Wii U until March would likely only have had a negative impact on sales. The game issue might hold some water, but if you seriously think a few extra games at launch would cause the Wii U to sell more in 6 weeks with a March launch than 23 weeks with a November launch then I've got a bridge to sell you. Retailer discounts could have an effect, but I'm not sure clearances to get rid of excess stock is the healthiest thing for the Wii U. You do understand that DQX is an mmo right? It's not going to have the same appeal as a normal DQ. Were you confident that the 360 version of FFXI was going to sell huge numbers? I mean after all FFX sold almost 3 million across its various releases and FFXI only sold 150k before expansions. Also DQX was announced way before the Wii U was even known about, it just didn't get shown until later when they also announced it was coming to the Wii U. I really have no clue why you think people would ignore DQX on Wii just so they can wait 8 months and buy a new system to play it. Why didn't this happen for the other games on the Wii U or really any system? Why didn't the Wii owners skip Just Dance so they could buy the Wii U version? Remember how you thought Just Dance 4 was going to easily do 100k in the UK, and it barely did a tenth of that? As for the rest, I don't know why you think injustice will make much of an impact. How many people are out there that want Injustice, don't own a PS3/360/Wii U already, and would choose the more expensive Wii U as their console to play it on? Monster Hunter could have some impact, but it didn't make a huge splash in Japan and it will be competing with the 3DS version. Rayman, again, maybe a small bump, but it isn't a very big series. Lego City is probably the best shot at selling some systems, but it won't be out in Japan I believe, and will have only about a month in Europe for the time we are looking at. All of these things are coming late in the period we are looking at, and none of them are sure fire massive system sellers. |
I had a fairly decent response written to this, but Opera decided to crash just as I was nearing the end of it. I'll give a shorthand version - it won't be as complete, but I'm not writing the whole response again.
The 360 and PS3 comparison wasn't intended to say "this proves that the Wii U is selling fine", it was intended to prove that you can't use local launch dates and assume that behaviour works the same - the European launch of the PS3 didn't happen in a vacuum.
Yes, DQX is an MMO. And recent MMOs have done quite well in Japan - Monster Hunter Tri and the Wii version of DQX have both well outperformed Final Fantasy XI (which was primarily on PC, remember). I'm not suggesting that DQX is going to be selling 4 million copies in Japan, but I certainly see it breaking the 1 million mark. Note that few games get announced for both older and newer system before the newer system launches, and usually those lack any significant benefit for the newer version - DQX for Wii U has significant benefit.
Just Dance is selling poorly on Wii U because there's no real benefit to it over the Wii version, and no other game to support it in terms of Just Dance players' interest in the system. I had failed to compensate for that issue, and for the fact that Nintendo didn't come out with more information on upcoming games in a timely manner, and thus I overestimated early sales.
Injustice isn't the system-seller, but it increases the perceived value of the system. Monster Hunter Tri is selling almost as well as Nintendo Land in Japan. You underestimate Rayman (especially given that it's the second exclusive 2D platformer for the system). Lego City will have a month and a half in both America and Europe, and I never suggested it would have a significant impact in Japan.
And what you forget is that, when a system only has three system sellers, and gets two more, even if they're weak system sellers, they'll still produce a noticeable bump in sales. Note that I never said it would produce massive numbers - we're talking 100k here, 100k there, averaged over five notable releases plus information releases. Basically, I think Nintendo's updated numbers are quite a reasonable estimate - an additional 1 million in the next two months or so, in the form of about 600k due to steady sales and another 400k due to bumps.
